Reality pays a visit to the Labour party conference, but it’s the ‘Hope Again’ that kills you

It could be just me, but I’m beginning to find that all this “hope” stuff is getting me down. Everywhere you go at the Labour party conference, you are being urged to “Hope Again”. It’s on the screens in the main hall and on banners in the exhibition area. It’s on T-shirts, balloons and coffee mugs. It’s all just a bit much. Overkill. You now bump into Labour MPs who are visibly collapsing under the strain of having to walk around with an optimistic perma-grin. And the conference is only into its second day. Come Wednesday they will all be on intravenous Valium.

What does “Hope Again” even mean? Is it an instruction? Have we all been hoping in a highly unsatisfactory way so far? Are we being sent back to hope school to learn how to be more upbeat? In which case, I rather think these remedial classes in hoping will be wasted on me. I’ve always been a bit miserable. It feels a bit like someone going round and telling you “Smile. It may never happen.” Or to “Keep calm and carry on.” There are also distinct echoes of Samuel Beckett: Fail again. Fail better. Only in Liverpool it’s: Hope again. Hope better.

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