Readers will of course be familiar with the Battle of Karánsebes, in what is now Romania. But just in case you’re not, the short version is that in 1788, Austrian forces defending the town got drunk on schnapps, started fighting over the booze, and, convinced they were under attack from the enemy, opened fire on each other with artillery before retreating in disarray. Two days later the bemused Ottoman army arrived to find dead and wounded Austrians and an undefended town.

Which brings us to the Labour Party. They might have expected their conference in Liverpool to be an event overshadowed by Friday’s not-Budget. They may have feared that they would be struggling to respond to the kind of impossible choices that Conservative chancellors of the exchequer delight in laying before their Labour opponents.

It felt like a pitch for government

Instead, as she walked onto the platform on Monday afternoon, Labour’s Rachel Reeves found herself in the place of a baffled Ottoman scout trying to work out what the hell had happened here. A Tory government – a Tory government – had crashed the pound and was sending mortgage rates through the roof. Back in London, Kwasi Kwarteng was demonstrating that nothing says “everything’s fine” like being pursued down the street by reporters shouting questions that you’re pretending you can’t hear. The considered view was that the only thing stopping further falls was the belief that the Bank of England was about to intervene.

Political parties usually fight over the centre ground. Who can position themselves as the mainstream party of reasonableness? But Labour, having spent the last couple of years cautiously, so cautiously, creeping back to this area of the battlefield, now find it deserted. Somewhere, off in the distance, they can hear the sound of the Conservatives, locked in battle with their mortal enemy, the Conservatives.

A change has come over Labour, and it’s not just about what happened last Friday. The conference is packed with all kinds of folk who haven’t bothered coming in years. There are sharp suits and expensive stands, think tankers and columnists, all the people attracted like seagulls behind a trawler to the possibility of power. The mobile internet on Liverpool’s docks has collapsed under the weight of iPhones trying to retrieve emails from the office back in London.

A year ago, when Reeves used her conference speech to tickle Labour tummies and attack the Conservatives, it sounded complacent. This year she did much the same and it felt like a pitch for government. Context matters.

Ed Miliband had spoken before her and done a good warm-up job. No longer burdened by leadership, he’s found his voice. It helps that he’s working a brief, climate change, where he essentially only has to tell Labour what it wants to hear. With a deep tan and big hair, he resembled a 1980s televangelist, especially when he reached the call-and-response section of his speech. “Let’s hear it for doubling onshore wind,” he cried, and they roared their approval.

But the star turn was Reeves. It was standing room only, and people did stand, throughout, crowded down the sides of the big hall and out to the doors. “We are facing a national emergency,” she began. Kwarteng had crashed the pound, “and for what? Not to invest in the industries of the future. Not for our NHS. Not for our schools. But for tax cuts for the wealthiest.”

They have become the reasonable people in the room.

It was a solid speech, with a repeated refrain: “It is time for a government that is on your side, and that government is a Labour government.” What made it effective was the context, the decision of Kwarteng and Liz Truss to abandon the centre ground. The big announcement was a vast hiring spree for the NHS. This would be paid for, Reeves said, by bringing back the top rate of tax. It would be interesting to know how Labour planned to pay for this before Kwarteng handed them his gift-wrapped tax-cut-for-the-few. Perhaps they’ll include the original version of the speech in the DVD extras.

“I will be Britain’s first green chancellor,” Reeves announced, conjuring an image of a new Marvel series, She-Hulk: Chancellor of the Exchequer. “It will fall to us to fix the damage the Tories have done. We have done it before, we will do it again.”

As speechmakers, Reeves and Keir Starmer fall well short of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. But simply by staying where they were and allowing the government to wander off, they have become the reasonable people in the room.

Later on, the Treasury and the Bank put out their responses to the day’s events, and the pound fell further. And in Liverpool the Labour party looked about itself and tried to work out how these people had beaten them four times in a row.

Stung by related defeats, Labour people still fear that they are missing something. Perhaps Kwarteng and Truss are right about where the real battle is. Perhaps it’s all a deeper trap. But…