“This is the economics of Narnia,” Frances O’Grady of the Trades Unions Congress told Laura Kuenssberg. The mind wandered. C.S. Lewis’s books are frustratingly vague on the question of Narnian political economy. Are deficit-funded tax cuts a big feature? There would probably be fewer problems with illegal immigrants entering through wardrobes if border security didn’t amount to a single untrained faun.

The unexpectedly long Narnian winter has contributed to the energy crisis, but on the upside, it never being Christmas means employers don’t have to worry about the productivity impact of three bank holidays in the space of a week.

Narnia is an allegory, of course, for a land that has for years been under a cruel government that keeps freezing things. But is there now the prospect of a thaw, a new alternative on the horizon?

Keir Starmer had arrived to tell us that there was. His message to Labour’s conference in Liverpool is going to be one of faith. “The hope for a Labour government has turned into the belief in a Labour government,” he told Kuenssberg.

Some people have to get unearned Turkish Delight

He was certainly more on the front foot than a year ago, when he spent the first day of Labour conference discussing female biology with Andrew Marr. But he still struggles to think on his feet, spending an oddly long time going round in circles on an empty hypothetical about Labour’s proposals on energy prices, something he really ought to have been able to answer very quickly. He floundered again at the end when Kuenssberg asked him what unpopular thing he’d be prepared to do, as if leading Labour wasn’t answer enough.

Starmer’s pitch is that he’s the reasonable pragmatist, the antidote to all the excitement we’ve had over the last few years. Perhaps this is why he struggles with issues where he hasn’t worked out the answer. Unwilling to commit to anything, he ends up sounding woolly.

But then the alternative might be the certainty of the zealot. Kwasi Kwarteng, who appeared on Kuenssberg’s show after Starmer, seems to be as determined, if not more, to deliver a Labour government. He was unrepentant. The government is going for growth, and if that means that some people have to get unearned Turkish Delight, so be it.

The talking animals of Narnia breathed a sigh of relief

Had the reaction to his not-Budget statement given him pause for thought? Had it hell. “I don’t comment on market movements,” he said. “We have to show that this country is open for business.” Where business might have got different ideas, he didn’t say. His tax cuts, he insisted, weren’t just for the rich. “They favour people right across the income scale,” he said, from people earning £1 million a year to people earning £10 million a year to Downing Street officials being paid through lobbying firms in complicated arrangements that he wasn’t able to comment on.

“It’s really time now to focus on growing our economy,” Kwarteng told Kuenssberg. This is all well and good, but it’s weird that we keep having this discussion without anyone ever mentioning that the government’s main economic policy remains “make it harder for businesses to sell things to France”.

As for the Brexit dividend, it remains just over the horizon. On Friday, the Chancellor had suggested a bonanza of deregulation. On Sunday, he seemed baffled that people had taken him at his word.  “We’re not going to relax environmental rules,” he said. The talking animals of Narnia breathed a sigh of relief.

Meanwhile Starmer was off to the conference proper, to lead them in singing “God Save The King”, a sentiment, and indeed a pair of nouns, about which some party members have doubts.

The conference set is a huge union flag, and the intended message is clear: Labour, despite what you might have heard, loves Britain. At last year’s conference, Jeremy Corbyn’s period as leader went simply unacknowledged. This time he is still unmentioned, but you don’t need a talking beaver to tell you that all this stuff was aimed at him. Always opposition. Never government.