Analysis: SDLP not surprised by Labour MP's comments

An SDLP fringe event is being held at the Labour Party conference

Big party conferences are a strange beast and hard to manage.

There’s the one in the main conference hall, where the big politicians make the big carefully calibrated speeches the leadership wants to carry the message.

And there are the hundreds of fringe events dotted around the conference complex, where sometimes the unscripted becomes the story.

It was at one of these events at the Labour conference on Tuesday morning that the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Fleur Anderson MP had such a moment.

Not a surprise

She was asked about the prospects of a border poll being called.

"Not imminent" she replied, before adding that it is “not a priority”.

Now in one way that’s no surprise.

After all her boss Sir Keir Starmer told BBC News NI a year ago that such a poll was “not even on the horizon”.

The thing is, he didn’t say it while sitting beside the outgoing leader of the SDLP, Colum Eastwood, and the incoming one, Claire Hanna.

This was their big conference breakfast event.

Fleur Anderson’s definitive dismissal of a border poll made them swallow hard.

Fleur Anderson was speaking at an SDLP fringe event at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool

To be fair to the SDLP, they’ve long made it clear that while a united Ireland - or in their terms a 'New Ireland' - is their ultimate destination, they know there’s much work to do before then.

Claire Hanna denied that Fleur Anderson’s comments were a surprise.

But she could have done without them here and now.

Especially coming just days after Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald used her fringe speech to call for a border poll within six years.

It’s unlikely that the MP for Putney would have made such comments in a prepared speech at an event hosted by an Irish Nationalist party.

The incoming SDLP leader, Claire Hanna, said Anderson's comments were not a surprise

But make them she did, to the SDLP's obvious - though unspoken - discomfort.

Unionists, none of whom are attending the Labour conference, will undoubtedly love it.

As will supporters of Sinn Féin.

As for the SDLP, their role as self-proclaimed "critical friends" of Labour just got a bit more difficult.