Guido has spent the day skulking the corridors of the Liverpool Convention Centre and Jury’s Inn waiting for the Labour Party conference to really kick off. Lobbyists and hacks seem to outnumber the dyed in the wool types and even the most rabble rousing of activists are amusing themselves playing Sky’s political top trumps. It’s as quiet as a scouse mouse.

The whole conference is a bit of a shambles. The airport-style security scanners are on and off resulting in queues out, back and around. The media bunker, in the bowels of the building and thus encased in steel and concrete, has limited phone reception and the £250 for rubbish slow internet has hardly buttered up hacks.  If you can’t run a conference properly, it doesn’t leave much hope for the country…

Given the state of Labour’s finances it comes as no surprise that the whole affair has been done on the cheap. It was pointed out that the set looks like someone handed the designer a note saying “there’s no money left”…

Ed’s chat on the regional fringes last night was of the “media reality and actual reality”. Well the proof is in the pudding in Liverpool. Maybe The Guardian’s shindig tonight will yield that elusive story. Guido’s not holding his breath though…