Labour conference 2026

Labour Party conference is 27-30 September in Liverpool. Most delegates arrive, and the Labour women's conference is held, on 26 September. Women's conference this year will be trans-exclusive: most unions are boycotting it in protest, and there is talk of a protest demonstration outside.

Labour conference has never, ever been really democratic. In the Blair-Brown era, 1997-2009, conference was neutered.

However, the conference still draws about 20,000 people (a lot of lobbyists, but most of those from NGOs) and has many and large fringe meetings.

Solidarity is officially banned by the Labour Party (since 2021), but we will be in Liverpool to sell literature and to help friends within the Party.

The conference has been tamped down since 2021, and especially in 2025, though even that conference carried votes against the platform on Palestine, on wealth tax, and on migrant work visas.

Partly the tamping down is by rule changes since 2021 which have pushed back on the mild democratic reopening in the Corbyn era. Mostly it is through “administrative” changes (many motions ruled out of order; motions published only hours before delegates vote on which “topics” will reach the floor; arbitrary subdivision of “topics” to ghettoise critical motions on issues like NHS and housing…) and through a decline in the will of local Labour Party delegates to challenge such things or even to use such openings as moving “reference back” of sections of the National Policy Forum report.

Under a longstanding rule, rule-change proposals from affiliates and local Labour Parties come up only with a year's delay. In 2026 only one such proposal will be debated, an unobjectionable one from Disability Labour.

Groups like Labour Left Internationalists, Labour Campaign for Council Housing (with a motion on housing), Mainstream (with one on water nationalisation), and Momentum will be seeking to get motions and "references back" from local Labour Parties onto the conference floor. §