I have to confess I wasn’t at either, as I was visiting my family in Kent. But I was able to follow the mood at the rival events via the magic of Twitter and then read Ed Miliband’s keynote speech here.

The effect of reading a mixed stream of tweets from the two was almost of observing two parallel universes or at least rival political paradigms.

The LRC one looked more fun, in the way in which watching the Sealed Knot batter each other with pikes whilst re-enacting the English Civil War might be fun.

It had about as much connection to addressing the electoral, economic and political challenges facing Labour in 2011 as the political slogans of the English Civil War might have.

Its keynote speaker, who was greeted with a rapturous standing ovation, was Tony Benn. He said pretty much what he would have said 30 years ago in 1981, when he was helping lay the foundations for Labour being out of power until 1997.

With a couple of exceptions, the audience was the same audience as in 1981 too – literally the same people with the same opinions, but 30 years older and their opinions 30 years more out-of-date.

Like Compass, the LRC debated whether to reorientate itself away from the Labour party. To their credit, a majority blocked this, but one has to ask what planet the minority faction is on thinking now is a good time to undermine the only major party opposing the Tory-led coalition.

A large majority voted for a politically bonkers call on Labour councillors to refuse to set legal budgets rather than implement cuts caused by Eric Pickles. This ‘stop the world I want to get off’ strategy was tried by Ted Knight in Lambeth in the 1980s. It did not stop Thatcher’s cuts. Refusing to set balanced budgets now would see Labour councillors lose their budget-making powers to town hall bureaucrats, who would make the cuts for us with no reference to our political priorities. A brave councillor was heckled for saying they would obey the law and the Labour whip and vote for a balanced budget.

On the campaign against the tuition fee hike it chose as guest speaker the ex-SWP University of London Union President Clare Solomon, a prominent apologist for rioters on national TV.

If the LRC conference represented the ‘Last Left’, the venerable Fabian Society attracted a younger and more forward-looking crowd and lived up to its billing of ‘Next Left’.

I get the impression some of the sessions and workshops were painfully worthy in the best Fabian tradition and that the fireworks of the LRC were notably absent. But, given a choice between a 1980s-style ‘exciting’ response to electoral defeat and a bit of painfully worthy introspection and deep thought about how to repair our relationship with Middle Britain, I’d opt for the latter.

The star of the Fabian show was Ed Miliband, fresh from a storming victory in the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election.

Ed began to articulate an analysis of why we lost in May 2010 that will help him develop a new approach that could get us re-elected.

He acknowledged we had been too managerialist in power, sometimes too intrusively statist and sometimes too trusting in markets.

Crucially he acknowledged that our slump to under 30 per cent in the general election means we have to change ourselves and show we have learnt the lessons administered by the voters, not just say ‘no’ to the government.

He set out the realities of life facing the ‘squeezed middle’ in Britain, and a vision of a future economy ‘with more living wage jobs – and well paying jobs – [where] we embed social justice at the heart of the way the market economy is run rather than having to make it an optional extra.’

And on social issues he spoke about the importance of ‘the values, institutions and relationships that people cherish the most’ and going beyond both bureaucratic state socialism and blind faith in markets to a socialism ‘based on mutualism, localism and the common bonds of solidarity’, and put liberty back at the heart of Labour’s values.

He ended by calling for political reform and reaching out to work with progressives within the Lib Dems disillusioned with their party’s cooperation with the Tories.

Ed’s speech deserves a careful read if, like me, you weren’t there to see it. You don’t have to agree with every word, but it demonstrates a leader doing the serious thinking about how to get Labour elected again and what kind of society we want to create.

What a shame that the energies of the people at the LRC Conference seemed focused on a calling for a re-run of their own mistakes in the early 1980s, rather than coming up with some original thinking to contribute to the debate about Labour’s future.

Photo: Jim Linwood