The Ghost of Walter Wolfgang Will Always Haunt The Labour Party Conference

No Clearer, No Wiser: Labour Conference Ends as It Began

Another Labour Party conference draws to a close, and we emerge no clearer, no wiser, only with Nigel Farage’s name echoing through the halls, Owen Jones ejected on spurious safeguarding grounds, and the ghost of Walter Wolfgang haunting every stage-managed standing ovation.

Wolfgang. Remember that name. Refugee from Nazism, fighter for socialism, Labour member since 1948, opponent of the Iraq War. In 2005, aged 82, he was manhandled from the Labour conference for daring to shout “nonsense” during Jack Straw’s justifications for Iraq. The cameras caught it all: elderly Jewish escapee from Nazi Germany, roughly ejected by New Labour security for exercising democratic dissent.

Margaret Hodge, self-appointed guardian of Labour’s soul, scourge of supposed antisemitism, raised not a single objection to this treatment. The Blairites who would later weaponise antisemitism accusations against Corbyn supporters watched silently as security roughed up an 82-year-old Holocaust refugee. The hypocrisy was already complete; we simply hadn’t recognised it yet.

Wolfgang himself understood what had happened to the party he’d served for six decades. Writing afterward, he captured Labour’s transformation with devastating clarity: “Watching Margaret Hodge and the Loony Left morph effortlessly into New Labour was not a pretty sight. Networking with power-mad social climbers was not my idea of the good life.”

He had remained a member despite his disillusionment, clinging to the belief that Labour still connected him “at the national level with people who shared my beliefs in the possibility of a fairer and more equal society.” The conference violence ended even that hope: “Last week has made clear what I’ve known but not wanted to admit for at least six years: that you have made it impossible for me to enjoy any such connection.”

That was 2005. Twenty years later, nothing has changed except the names of the wars we’re asked to support without question. Then it was Iraq; now it’s unconditional backing for Gaza’s destruction and endless sabre-rattling toward Russia as if the Cold War never ended. The method remains identical: manufactured consent, debate suppressed, loyalty demanded above truth.

Wolfgang represented everything Blair’s project needed to eliminate. Old Labour incarnate: the Labour of debate, dissent, reasoned argument, democratic accountability. Give Wolfgang sixty seconds on camera with Blair, and the Prime Minister would have been demolished by simple truth spoken with moral authority. That’s precisely why he had to be silenced before the cameras could find him.

The Iraq debate was unthinkable at Labour conferences then, not because the arguments were weak, but because they were overwhelming. Blair’s government had suborned intelligence services to manufacture false evidence, misled Parliament into voting for war, and ignored every lesson from Britain’s last Mesopotamian disaster. Any genuine debate would have exposed this immediately, sweeping New Labour from office in a gale of evidence and argument.

So debate was eliminated. Political parties exist to turn debate into action, to allow people from different backgrounds, regions and classes to argue toward collective decisions. But when the outcome is predetermined, debate becomes dangerous. Chancellor Gordon Brown’s “peculiarly Presbyterian form of neo-liberalism” was absolutely non-negotiable. PFI, that continuous tax on the poor by the rich, remained unexamined. Deficits funded not productive public investment but highly-paid consultants in an increasingly privatised state.

Fast forward to 2025, and Starmer’s conference reveals the same pattern. No debate on Gaza, no serious discussion of Ukraine policy, no challenge to neoliberal orthodoxy. The economic model has evolved from PFI to privatisation-by-stealth, from consultant contracts to digital surveillance infrastructure, but the fundamental grift continues unchanged.

Owen Jones’s ejection from this year’s conference, on fabricated “safeguarding” grounds after he dared criticise Labour’s Gaza policy, demonstrates that Wolfgang’s treatment wasn’t aberration but template. Dissent must be physically removed before it can find a microphone, before it can expose the gap between Labour’s rhetoric and reality.

The tribe of Labour still fails the country while abandoning the people. The faces change, Blair to Brown to Miliband to Corbyn to Starmer, but the institutional rot persists through every transition except the brief Corbyn interregnum. Even that exception proves the rule: when genuine debate returned, when party democracy briefly functioned, the entire establishment mobilised to destroy it.

Starmer cribbing Orwell on patriotism is rich. Orwell meant defending ordinary people. If Starmer spent less effort on delivering to the globalist and corporations, he wouldn't have to peer nervously over his shoulder at Nigel Farage and Reform. #starmerspeech pic.twitter.com/fLrOxifCy0

— Labour Heartlands (@Labourheartland) September 30, 2025

Prime Minister Starmer gave us his big reflections on “patriotism” and “nationalism” at the Labour Party conference. It makes you wonder if his new speechwriters haven’t been cribbing straight from Orwell.

Who penned this:

“Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism… By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature, defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power… The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.” – George Orwell

But here’s the difference: Orwell’s patriotism was rooted in defending ordinary people, their culture, their way of life.

Starmer’s patriotism is little more than corporate branding. If he focused on delivering for the people rather than appeasing big business, he wouldn’t need to keep glancing nervously over his shoulder at Farage and Reform.

Wolfgang’s legacy haunts every stage-managed conference, every expelled journalist, every silenced member. He showed us that Labour’s transformation wasn’t evolution but corruption, not modernisation but capitulation. The party that once connected millions of working people to political power now serves as vehicle for careerists and courtiers, offering managed decline dressed as progressive governance.

Nothing has changed in twenty years except our capacity for surprise. We know what Labour is now. We know what it does to those who dare cry “nonsense” when confronted with obvious lies. We know that debate, dissent, and democratic accountability remain as unwelcome today as when Wolfgang was dragged from that conference hall two decades ago.

The question is whether we’ll keep pretending otherwise, or finally admit what Wolfgang understood in 2005: that the party has made it impossible for anyone who believes in a fairer and more equal society to maintain connection with its project. Some truths, once spoken, cannot be unheard, even when those who speak them are forcibly removed from the room.