The paymasters’ conference

What a lot of unions there are. I walked around the exhibition stands at the Labour conference yesterday afternoon and counted 10 stalls devoted to trade unions: 10 displays out of the 72 that weren’t directly associated with the Labour Party in one of its guises. The unions’ stands were unlike the ramshackle boxes of lesser campaigners that clung to the walls of the conference centre; as the pictures above and below attest, they took centre stage to match the grand baronial pavilions at a medieval fair.

This tells you all you need to know about who is lobbying the Labour Party at present. Although perhaps lobbying is the wrong word, given that the Brothers’ fill roughly 85 per cent of Labour’s coffers.   

But, despite the machismo and the self-importance, few people patronised the unions’ stalls to sign up with Len McCluskey’s band of merry men. As you can see below, the lure of electronic darts proved too great for many.