The big Labour national policy forum at Warwick in late July was supposed to pin down the party’s next manifesto. Just as “Warwick I” was agreed shortly before the last general election.

The event did have an air of stage-management about it, with unions and ministers trying to agree a deal days before anyone even arrived in the Midlands.

On the Sunday, after two days of talks - which went on until the early hours - the party emerged with a 20-page agreement, interpreted wrongly in some quarters as a capitulation to the left. Instead it was mostly vague waffle.

As far as the unions are concerned, this wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. The real Warwick II has yet to be written, one well-placed source in the movement tells me. Instead, the real negotiations to nail Labour’s next manifesto will take place some way down the line; probably six months before the next general election.

September 4, 2008 11:24am in Gordon Brown, Labour, UK politics, Unions | Comment