The last time Keir Starmer addressed the Labour Party conference, he had ripostes prepared for hecklers, and he needed them. If he had any put-downs up his sleeve on Tuesday afternoon, we never heard them. The hall was ready to cheer pretty much anything he said. Labour, having spent a few years enjoying the heady drug that is ideological purity, has now caught the whiff of a new, more potent high: power.

A year ago they were behind in the polls, meeting for the first time since a catastrophic defeat, facing a prime minister who seemed, despite his manifest failings, invulnerable. Now they were enjoying their biggest poll lead since the days of He-Who-Can-Be-Named-Once-More, Tony Blair, and a prime minister seemingly determined to do all she can to help them. No wonder they were happy. 

What was more, they were listening to a speaker who was energised and passionate, who had them cheering lines about winning votes, getting into office, changing lives. And later, they were going to hear from Starmer, and he would probably be interesting, too. 

It was slightly unfortunate that the person selected to introduce Starmer was a so much more natural speaker than he is. She was Satvir Kaur, the new leader of Southampton council, and a parliamentary candidate. Watching her address the hall, there was the sense that we were seeing the arrival of a future political star. Pretty much every line in her brief speech was applauded and cheered. She praised the last Labour government, and she introduced Starmer as “our next prime minister”, which is showing more confidence in Liz Truss’s future than some people have.

First, there was the obligatory Starmer Movie, showing Starmer Walking, Starmer Listening, Starmer Meeting Children, Starmer Meeting Old People, Starmer Pointing At Things and Starmer Smiling. If you want a prime minister who can walk, point and smile, we learned, Starmer is your man.

Then we got the leader himself

Then we got the leader himself. It’s hard to overstate what an enormous help Kwasi Kwarteng has been to the Labour Party this week. Starmer’s team will have been working on this speech for months, and the best lines arrived yesterday morning courtesy of His Majesty’s Treasury. 

“The government has lost control of the British economy,” Starmer began, “And for what? They’ve crashed the pound – and for what? Higher interest rates. Higher inflation. Higher borrowing. And for what? Not for you. Not for working people. For tax cuts for the richest one percent in our society.”

Later, he would quote Kwarteng directly, from his description of the Conservative economic record as “a vicious cycle of stagnation”. It really wouldn’t be a surprise at this point to learn that Kwarteng is a Labour sleeper agent.  

There was a re-run of the Starmer back-story, from the pebbledash semi with a Cortina in the drive to the human rights lawyer to the prosecutor. They still haven’t quite nailed this. Perhaps it needs its own video, though they may be saving that for the election. 

In another sign of how far the party has moved from the days of Jeremy Corbyn, there were mass standing ovations for rooting out antisemitism and for supporting “Ukraine and its people fighting on the frontline of freedom”. A small knot of people near the back stayed resolutely seated, presumably in solidarity with Vladimir Putin’s plucky fight against NATO aggression. 

Perhaps the most interesting note in the speech was the way the Labour leader talked about Britain. This is tricky, especially in a party that sees itself as internationalist. But Starmer is trying to make Labour feel like a patriotic party. Behind him the conference set was a huge Union Jack. He demanded to know why Britain’s wind farms are owned by Swedes, why millions of us buy our electricity from a French company, and why the Chinese have a stake in our nuclear power plants. A big part of the answer to this, of course, is because the last Labour government was opposed to economic nationalism. These were sections of the speech that Blair could never have delivered. 

In Starmer’s Britain, there will be “clean British power” — none of your filthy foreign watts here — provided by a new company, “Great British Energy” that will — and now we got the biggest spontaneous roar of approval — be publicly owned.  

This thread of patriotism led to the section that should trouble the Tories greatly, on Brexit. “It’s no secret I voted Remain – as the prime minister did,” Starmer began. But, he went on, “whether you voted Leave or Remain, you’ve been let down.” His “make Brexit work” line wasn’t new, but he had begun to put flesh on the bones. A points-based immigration system, one of the world’s most popular meaningless policies, is now a Labour policy too. “I will make sure we buy, make and sell more in Britain,” he said. These are lines that have felt fairly exclusive to the Tories in recent years.  

It was, Starmer concluded, “a Labour moment”. To be honest, it’s so far been more of a “Tory total collapse event”, but Labour feel well-placed to exploit it.