The Labour conference was, as one former leader might have put it, ram-packed. There were queues to get in, snaking back from the security checkpoints for hundreds of yards across the Liverpool docks. But those queues turned out, like the queues in the Soviet Union, to be queues for other queues: queues for food and drink, queues for loos, queues even at one point to get out again.

Did I imagine “DOUBLE TRACTOR PRODUCTION”?

There were of course queues to get into the conference hall, where the voting also had a Soviet feel, every hand going up to support the various motions put before the delegates. Huge banners hung down the sides: “CUT NHS WAITING LISTS”; “START UP GREAT BRITISH ENERGY”. Did I imagine “DOUBLE TRACTOR PRODUCTION”?

The speeches are following a similar pattern: Labour are good, Tories are bad, everything is a mess, our enemies must be crushed. Beyond that, we learned that a brighter tomorrow beckons, but the details are sparse.

Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds had got the memo about the retro-USSR theme, but had characteristically got it slightly confused and was sporting a Romanov-style beard. Angela Rayner watched him carefully as he spoke, perhaps pondering the closest place to bury a corpse in quicklime.

The big draw on Monday was a speech from Rachel Reeves, the chancellor. She was introduced by a tech entrepreneur Alex Depledge, who quoted a line from her own favourite film Jerry Maguire, “you had me at ‘Hello’.” Depledge revealed she’d had a similar feeling upon meeting Reeves for the first time, although in this case it had been “you had me at ‘I want to make sure that wealth creation is no longer a dirty word in the UK.’” Maybe it sounds better when Renee Zellweger says it.

Then we got one of the now-traditional intro films of a politician pointing at things. Here was Reeves in a high-vis jacket, walking. Here she was in a green anorak, explaining something. Here she was in overalls high-fiving a wealth creator who had learned they were no longer a dirty word. With so many costume changes, you started to get a sense of why the chancellor might feel she needs a clothing budget.

With little to actually announce, Reeves made a great deal of the fact of her own existence, as the first woman to do her job. She told the women in the hall they all had a duty “to show our daughters and our granddaughters that they need place no ceilings on their ambitions!” Or almost none: the Labour Party very much prefers its leaders to be white men, ideally from a couple of postcodes in North London.

Oratory is one of those skills where the highest levels involve making it look like you’re putting no effort into it at all. Reeves hasn’t achieved that: you can see the gear shifts as she moves between sections of the speech. Her long oratorical suit is righteous anger: she has low growls of fury for discussing particularly wicked things that Conservatives have done, and a generally stern demeanour that lends itself to telling us all off. However since her last conference appearance, she has learned to smile when she gets to the bits that are supposed to be good news, showing all her teeth as she enunciates with great care. This is, if anything, even more terrifying than her frown.

Truly, comrades, the very earth shook as they cheered her

As she got going, a man near the front stood on his chair and unfurled a banner. Another man began yelling. What was his cause? He looked young to be a pensioner, but perhaps that just reflects my own aging. It turned out to be a portmanteau heckle, taking in both Palestine and climate change. There was anger in the hall, as there always is at such moments, and as the pair were manhandled out, Reeves announced that Labour was no longer “a party of protest”.

There was another unintelligible yell later, but the first interruption may have helped ensure that, when Reeves got to the bit of her speech about cutting pensioner heating payments, she got a round of applause.

The trickiest matter out of the way, she moved on to crowd-pleasing measures. The hated counter-revolutionary Sunak’s helicopter had been cancelled! A Covid Corruption Commissar would root out the filthy capitalists who had created wealth in unideological ways! “We want that money back!” she roared, her voice sounding like a squadron of T34 tanks opening their throttles as they sighted Berlin.

“Shovels in the ground!” she declared. “Cranes in the sky! The sounds and the sights of the future arriving!” Truly, comrades, the very earth shook as they cheered her.

The standing ovation went on for ages. There were hugs for her sister Ellie, a Cabinet Office minister, and for Keir Starmer. She hadn’t said much of substance, but she had at least reminded her audience, after a wobbly few weeks, that they are in power, and the other lot aren’t. That’s why they get the queues.