I’m writing this from Chicago. I have not felt this excited about attending a party conference – or convention as it is called here – for four decades.
October 1985 was the last time I was so energised by this “got to be there” kind of feeling. Labour conference, Bournemouth. Party leader Neil Kinnock, who I had got to know when I was a general news reporter, and who had persuaded me I should go into political reporting.
My first Labour conference for the Mirror, and I knew in advance what Neil had in mind – attack the hard left Militant Tendency head-on, make clear there was no place for them in the Labour Party.
It was one of the most electrifying conference speeches ever given, a seminal moment in the development of 1980s Labour from party of opposition to party of government, though it would take more than a decade before we got there. I remember hairs standing to attention on my neck as the attack on Militant mounted, adrenalin pumping as the significance of the drama unfolding became clear, thinking how glad I was to be making the jump to political journalism.
Neil and his family have long since been very close friends, we have had ups and downs, but my love and admiration for him in many ways go back to that speech, the passion in his politics, the power of his oratory, the courage he showed, the risk he took, the long term-benefits to Labour that were subsequently accrued.
When I made the jump to politics, party conferences became too much like hard work ever truly to enjoy them. But now, excitement again… from Bournemouth 1985 to Chicago 2024.
I wasn’t planning to attend the Democratic Party convention. The idea for the summer was a month in France, mixing work, cycling, a few days at the Olympics in Paris, then back to the bike in Provence. Kamala Harris changed all that.
I hated myself for it, but the moment I turned off the TV after that awful Trump-Biden debate, I joined those who were saying a game-changer was needed to break the sense of inevitability that Trump was on his way back to the White House, and the only real game-changer the Democrats had left was one of personnel at the top of the ticket.
Joe Biden is a great guy, who has done more for the US in one term than many presidents have done in two. But he did the right thing in stepping down.
The question – and plenty had doubts – was whether Kamala Harris could step up. She has, and then some. This is a high-pressure, high-octane, high-risk week for the vice-president, but thus far, she has not put a foot wrong, nor a word in the wrong place. Likewise, up to now, Tim Walz looks like an inspired choice as running mate.
Though neither can reach the Kinnock oratorical heights – famously, Joe Biden plagiarised a Kinnock speech in 1987, at the time paying quite a political price – both are good speakers, and will be addressing crowds desperate for them to succeed. I will be among them, as desperate as any American that it all goes well.
Donald Trump is a real and present danger to so much that we hold dear. He has to be stopped.
This is the week when the momentum required to do so could itself become unstoppable; unstoppable, the word which, just a few weeks ago, people were using about Trump.
From unstoppable to unelectable… thanks to Biden doing the right thing, Harris making the most of the opportunity, and Trump frankly floundering, because his narcissism gets in the way of the adaptability that is required in a campaign, when the dynamics change. Please God may it stay that way to November 5.
Trump’s narcissism is almost matched by Elon Musk’s, and the Xitter owner is slowly driving me off his rancid platform. I am staying for now only on the basis that, as Paul Mason argues so strongly, you have to fight the far right wherever they are.
But I am meanwhile also migrating to Bluesky, where I quickly discovered that their standards are more like the Twitter of old before Trump’s new propagandist took over. Indeed, no sooner had I posted my first offering, than I got an email to say my account was suspended.
The reason? They worried it might be an impersonator, and would only reinstate the account if I announced on X that yes, I had created a Bluesky account, and it was indeed me over there. So thanks, Musk, very helpful.
I don’t think Nancy Pelosi would mind me calling her a tough old bird. She rather thrives on the image, as Rory Stewart and I found when interviewing her a few weeks ago; she gave me a right old going over about the Iraq war.
She was among the senior Democrats who put her head above the parapet in pressing Biden to step down, since when, according to the US media, they have not exchanged a word. Meanwhile, she has provoked another huge row with another hero of the centre left (me included), namely former Australian PM Paul Keating.
Keating has long been critical of AUKUS, the tripartite US-UK-Aussie defence arrangement, and in a recent TV interview criticised the Labor government’s approach to the China-Taiwan question. “Taiwan is not a vital Australian interest,” he argued, adding that it was “Chinese real estate”.
Pelosi was then interviewed on the same Aussie station, ABC, and kicked off by calling his statement “ridiculous” and “stupid.”
Keating, like Pelosi, finds it hard to step back from a fight. Out came a long statement, headlined “Pot calling the kettle black,” which focused largely on Pelosi’s 2022 visit to Taiwan, accusing her of taking the US and China closer to military confrontation than at any time since WWII.
Nor could he resist taking a swipe at ABC, saying the state broadcaster should avoid “being excited by sensationalist comment from a person who shares not a jot of identity with Australian national interests”. Remind me not to fall out with either of them.
Due to spend almost a week in the city, I checked out Eater Chicago, a website dedicated to its restaurants, sandwich bars, coffee shops and all things food. There were plenty of reminders that The Bear, much of which takes place in a restaurant kitchen, and which has just broken an Emmy record with no fewer than 23 nominations, is set in Chicago.
Not all the reviews were flattering. This, for example, from Eater Chicago editor Ashok Selvam: “It’s as if producers asked ChatGPT to concoct a version of Chicago instead of finding footage that rings true… one that, among other faults, presents a Chicago where Asian restaurants don’t exist.”
Another omission offended him. “No one did more to define Chicago culture in the ’90s than [basketball star] Michael Jordan and the Bulls. As The Bear weaves a fictional Chicago mixed with nostalgia and the present day, MJ’s absence is conspicuous.”
It is a great series though. And surely the MJ logic means no film set in Manchester – or even Coronation Street – would be complete without persistent reminders of Fergie, Keano, Becks or Eric Cantona.
There’s a thought… Cantona as a French sous-chef in The Bear! Box office.
