This is a Global Player original podcast.

Okay, this is probably really awful audio.

We're standing outside.

The wind is whipping across the Mersey.

There are white caps that you can see out there.

It is blustery and it is cold.

We're here for the Labour Party conference and the Labour Party is hoping

that the weather is a kind of metaphor

for economic winds of change.

We've woken up to the pound having tank

to its lowest level, I think, ever.

Storms on the financial markets.

Storms on financial market.

And Labour would be quite happy, I think,

if this was just reasonably solid, calm, quiet.

And let's go inside and see if it is.

So I haven't been to a Labour Party conference in over a decade.

The first thing that strikes me

is that there are far fewer people

trying to give you leaflets

to go to fringe meetings and far more corporates who are here to advertise and sell their wares

and perhaps cozy up to the Labour Party. We keep bumping into these very corporate stands,

...