Momentum steals Labour party limelight

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With NATO, committed to spending 2% of our national income.

It's the week of the annual Labour Party Conference here in Brighton. And about 100 metres away, the official event is taking place with all the big speakers from the podium.

But a lot of younger people, and indeed older people, have come to a separate independent set of events by Momentum. Momentum is a campaign group set up out of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership campaign. And it's continued to mobilise people, turn them into campaigners, to open up topics for debate. So we're here to talk to some people and find out why they've decided to come to Momentum's version of the annual conference.

This doesn't feel like a party conference to me. This feels like something else entirely. This feels like a reawakening of the left in Britain, a change that hasn't taken place in decades. I mean, it's vibrant. People are rethinking the important questions. It's not just about people from the top telling people what to do. There's a serious discussion going on here about how we should reorganise the country.

It feels more inclusive of every day people, I guess. And especially young people, as well. And the talks that have been going on have been, like, really fascinating across all boards of the spectrum.

I'm a Labour Party member. I campaigned for my CLP in the snap election. But I was trained by Momentum. And the way they engaged me was much more dynamic than the CLP. And it was much more about actually having real conversations with people on the doorstep, not just getting the voter data. And I kind of thought, this is the way to campaign. It's not how I've been taught by them.

The Overton window is root. We are not the extreme left. We are moderate socialists. And the people who call themselves moderates are the right wing of the Labour Party.

There's a contradiction in the Labour Party that runs along the lines of Fabianism and movement politics. Fabianism is about electing or putting people in power who are experts, who will act in the interest of the working class. Movement politics is about empowering people, and about the movement, and about giving people power in their workplaces and it's more bottom up.

Despite all that enthusiasm, Momentum does have some challenges. One is it's an organisation built around Jeremy Corbyn, but which wants to be democratic in how it operates. Another is that it wants to keep politics fun, but also get involved in the nitty gritty of policy making.

And yet this week an organisation, which is only two years old, has achieved something pretty impressive. And that's to get people who wouldn't normally go to a party conference to get involved, to go to events, and then potentially to go out and campaign for the Labour Party in the next general election. And that's something that has got the Tory Party in particular pretty worried. Harry Mance, Financial Times, Brighton.