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Scottish Labour Conference ’19 It’s all rock ’n’ roll while sliding to the left at conference karaoke

“Sliiiiiide to the left!” Never has a late night rendition of the Cha Cha Slide at Dundee’s Apex Hotel better summed up a Scottish Labour conference.

It came after a lively karaoke night hosted by the party’s youth wing on Saturday. Frank McAveety, the former Scottish executive minister who now leads the Labour group on Glasgow council, resisted a nomination to perform Napoleon XIV’s They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa! But to the shock and bemusement of the crowd, he happily belted out Roy Orbison’s Penny Arcade, the anthem of Rangers FC.

Soon after bestie MPs Paul Sweeney and Danielle Rowley were up with Oasis’s Don’t Look Back in Anger. Perhaps it’s a good job Ken Livingstone is no longer a Labour member — he once cut a disc with Blur, after all.

For what it’s worth I’m with Jonathan Meades, who once told me the obvious answer to the Oasis v Blur conundrum is Pulp. Common People got half the room on its feet when Scottish Young Labour executive member Tom Flanagan took to the stage.

Your own correspondent pitched a turn as Briana Corrigan — with former Momentum organiser Jess Galloway offering her best Dave Hemingway — for a Beautiful South duet. Alas, by the point we’d agreed on A Little Time there was no little time left, so we’ll have to wait till next year.

We rounded off the night hokey-cokeying to Loch Lomond, the traditional closing number of all parties north of the border, after an emotional swaying out to You’ll Never Walk Alone. Hope was, indeed, in all our hearts.

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