Ed Miliband speaks at the POLITICO Pub at the Labour Conference in Liverpool, England on Sept. 28, 2026.Baldo Sciacca for POLITICO

Labour conference: 8 things we learned down the POLITICO Pub – POLITICO

by · POLITICO

LIVERPOOL, England — A parade of top politicians from the governing Labour Party headed through the doors of the POLITICO Pub during the party’s annual conference in Liverpool.

Labour is in a chipper mood after swapping out unpopular leader Keir Starmer for the telegenic, hopey-changey Andy Burnham. But there’s a hard road ahead: a high-stakes budget arrives in exactly a month, and Nigel Farage’s right-populist outfit Reform UK remains just two points behind Labour in the national opinion polls, according to our aggregator.

Here are the snap takeaways from a flurry of frank conversations down the (traveling) POLITICO local.