Readers debate announcement that the Treasury is set to give on London stock exchange and stamp duty, Ed Miliband’s optimism and the Bee Network

Keir Starmer, take note.

Readers debate the validity of concerns surrounding digital IDs, Farage’s migration policies and Trump’s so-called UN ‘sabotage’

Most normal people only find out the Labour Party Conference is going on when they see clips of the Prime Minister’s speech on the news.

But there’s an awful lot more to it than that.

The event consists of four days packed with panels, talks and shindigs, with the first coffee-fuelled sessions kicking off around 8am and the final booze-fuelled sessions lasting as late as 3am.

Even if you’re the right kind of strange person who’s willing to take a few days off work for a political gathering, it can all get a bit exhausting.

For those who weren’t willing to put themselves through it, here are some of the things you might not have caught on the telly.

Not-MAGA baseball caps

One of the more bewildering and unexpected sights at this year’s Labour conference was all the people milling around in Trump-style baseball caps.

From a distance, all you could see was that they were the exact same shade of red as the hats made famous by the US President and they had some writing on the front.

Once you were a little closer, you could see it didn’t say ‘Make America Great Again’ – it said ‘Build, Baby, Build’ in a comic book-style font.

This was the brainchild of new Housing Secretary Steve Reed, who wanted to inject a bit of fun into the conference after a bleak few weeks for the party. He even signed a bunch of them.

I have it on good authority that the similarity to the MAGA caps was intended to be ironic, rather than any kind of homage to the The Donald.

Belting it out

One thing you might not know about British politicians is how much they love karaoke.

Well, not all of them. But the ones that do really do.

The Liberal Democrats have their ‘communioke’ night, where the screen faces out to the crowd for the ultimate singalong experience.

In Liverpool, there was a choice of the LabourList karaoke – where you could see Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander giving her rendition of Disco 2000 by Pulp – or the more exclusive Mirror Party.

That was where Health Secretary Wes Streeting treated the crowd to Elton John’s classic Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me, and talented Victims Minister Alex Davies-Jones performed a genuinely impressive You’ll Never Walk Alone for the Hillsborough families.

Good Luck, Milibabe

Ed Miliband has been popping up on TikTok feeds in recent weeks waxing lyrical about his unlikely love for US singer Chappell Roan.

So when Metro got the chance to chat with the Energy Secretary, we made sure to question him about it (just ahead of the more pressing and important questions, of course).

We asked which Chappell song he’d use to sum up his conference experience so far – but all he could think of was Pink Pony Club, a song which doesn’t really work as an answer but which he is ‘obsessed’ with.

Miliband also told us he still hadn’t quite managed to see her live, but it’s a strong ambition of his.

In the meantime, he’s gonna keep on dancing down in West Hollywood…

AI Attlee

You never really know what you’re going to get when you set off for a party conference, but some things still have the capacity to surprise.

One sure thing at Labour is plenty of chat about Clement Attlee’s transformative postwar government, which introduced the NHS and modern welfare state.

This year was the 80th anniversary of his 1945 victory, and there was some lovely retro merch on offer in the Labour store to mark it.

But eyebrows were raised at data company Datnexa’s introduction of an AI Clement Attlee to provide advice and information about the conference, accessible via the website AskClem.com.

The site claims robo-Clem is ‘customised with Labour Party-specific knowledge’ to ‘revolutionise how attendees engage with conference content’.

Row over ‘racism’

If you saw anything from the Labour conference, it might have involved this.

Sir Keir Starmer grabbed headlines on Sunday by telling the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that he believed Reform’s policy of deporting people currently living legally in the UK with indefinite leave to remain is ‘racist’.

What you might not have seen is just how much this remark set tongues wagging across the conference centre.

The PM had to make clear in further interviews that he doesn’t consider Reform voters or Nigel Farage themselves racist.

Some cabinet ministers, like Justice Secretary David Lammy, leapt with enthusiasm into using the ‘r’ word when talking about Farage, while other figures like Sadiq Khan explained why they hesitated over it.

If the intention was to wind up Farage, it certainly worked – he put a whole video up on social media about it. The question is how his millions of fans will respond.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.

Sir Keir Starmer has said he doesn’t believe Nigel Farage is a racist, despite using the word to condemn one of Reform UK’s flagship immigration policies.

At Labour’s annual party conference in Liverpool, the Prime Minister has trained his focus firmly on the right-wing party as his likely main adversary in the next election.

His main target has been the plan, announced by Reform leader Farage last Monday, to deport hundreds of thousands of people currently living legally in the UK with indefinite leave to remain.

In an interview with the BBC on Sunday, Sir Keir said that idea was both ‘racist’ and ‘immoral’.

He continued the attack in his keynote conference speech yesterday, vowing to ‘fight […] with everything we have’ against those who want to deport ‘people who have lived here for generations’.

Other members of the PM’s cabinet have also picked up the fight, with David Lammy making the eye-catching claim that Farage had ‘flirted with the Hitler Youth’ when he was young.

The Justice Secretary later rowed back on that remark, which was described by Reform as ‘beneath contempt’.

In an interview with Sky News today, Sir Keir made a distinction between the Reform leader and his policies when asked if he thought Farage was a racist.

He said: ‘No, nor do I think Reform voters are racist.

‘They’re concerned about things like our borders, they’re frustrated about the pace of change, so I’m not for a moment suggesting they are racist.’

The PM later described Farage as a ‘formidable politician’ but suggested he had ushered in a ‘dangerous moment for the country’.

Writing in the Daily Mail, Farage said he had believed Sir Keir was a ‘reasonable human being’ until his remarks this weekend.

He added: ‘Now I’m shocked at his behaviour.

‘I hope that when he wakes up this morning, he feels ashamed of what he has done to British politics over the past few days.’

A YouGov poll released this morning found that almost half of Brits – 47% – believe Reform UK is ‘generally racist’, with 36% saying the party is not racist.

More than four in ten also said they believed the party’s policies and voters specifically are also generally racist.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.

‘You promised you would stabilise the economy.’

Ed Miliband revealed what the government should be focusing on.

Keir Starmer delivered his keynote speech on the last full day of Labour’s party conference.

There is no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ migrant, only human beings. 

The PM will use his keynote speech at the Labour Conference to focus his attacks against Reform after calling its policies ‘racist’.

‘We understand your cause, and we have recognised a Palestinian state. But we are now a party in government, not a party of protest.’

‘Go diva’.

The chancellor is expected to promise ‘nothing less than the abolition of long-term youth unemployment’

The announcement comes exactly a week after Nigel Farage unveiled Reform’s plans to change the system.

The government insists it can still hit its 1.5million housebuilding target despite experts’ doubts

He said the plans ‘will rip this country apart’.

The new scheme, touted as an anti-illegal migration measure, won’t require UK residents to produce their ID in public.

After two failed leadership bids is it third time lucky for Andy Burnham?

It’s hoped to tackle illegal immigration.

Burnham will be the unexpected conference headliner because Labour members are sick of the advertised one.

Donald Trump’s rambling speech at the UN was just the latest in a long line of abuse Sadiq has dealt with.

For Palestinians, Britain has never been a bystander; it has been an architect of our dispossession.

The half-day experiment could be made permanent if London mayor Sadiq Khan gets his way.

The half-day experiment could be made permanent if London mayor Sadiq Khan gets his way.

Your Party seems more about egos and loyalties than it is about genuine representation.