“PLEASE BE AWARE THERE MAY BE LOUD NOISES.” The Liberal Democrats are nothing if not considerate of their members. On Tuesday morning, their conference hall had been a good spot for a nap: dimly lit, largely empty, soundtracked by the white noise of democracy: activists debating details of party policy that are at least two steps away from becoming law. But heading back into the hall after lunch, we got a warning all that was over. Ed Davey was speaking, and he was going to be turning it up to 11.

The Lib Dems are at least one of the cheerful cults

With more MPs than they’ve had in their history, the Lib Dems have been partying by the seaside in Brighton for four days. If some of them needed to sleep on Tuesday morning, it was only because they’d gone through Monday night. And why not? They are, after all, celebrating their second coming.

All political parties have shades of the cult to them: the beliefs unquestioned, the ancestors worshipped, the apostates excommunicated. The Lib Dems are at least one of the cheerful cults. In a week-and-a-half we’ll be joining the Tories in Birmingham, where visitors would be well-advised to avoid anyone offering Kool-Aid.

There was certainly something of the cult celebration to the afternoon. Perhaps parts of it were a little Anglican — parish notices, a collection (all things come from you, Sir Ed, and of your own do we give you) — but much of it given over shiny happy people congratulating each other and rejecting Satan. The party’s treasurer interrupted an appeal for cash to denounce her own “Brexit-loving, Rees-Mogg-adoring mother”. Perhaps she was carried away with the moment.

It’s not a cult where marrying out is forbidden, but Davey advised his audience that “if you want to find a lover, don’t join Tinder, join the Liberal Democrats!” And it’s certainly true that it has over the last decade been a party for people who couldn’t decide whether to swipe left or right.

Davey is an unlikely successor to the Rev Sun Myung Moon: few would have picked him as the charismatic hero who would lead his party to its greatest victory. But the members were clear that he was their man. Well, him and one other person: there was a huge cheer when the pre-speech video showed a picture of a sodden Rishi Sunak, a reminder of an election in which you could look statesmanlike simply by putting on a dry suit.

Not that Davey was going to let the party give him all the credit. “Please applaud yourselves!” he told the hall, and his followers duly did. Behind him on the stage were 50-odd of his new MPs — there wasn’t room for all of them — the evidence of the long-prophesied Lib Dem resurgence. Was Davey going to baptise them or conduct a mass wedding? He had something much worse planned.

His central theme, as it was during the election, was his own life as a carer, first for his dying mum, and now for his teenager. This section of the speech was honest and affecting — who wouldn’t be moved as he talked about his fears about who will care for his son after he’s gone? And led into the idea of “a caring nation”, which was a decent rebuke to the idea that the main problem in Britain is that we don’t pay enough attention to racist rioters.

But inevitably the speech was, like all conference speeches, 15 minutes too long. A row of the MPs behind him had to stand throughout, close on an hour. It seemed an unnecessarily cruel initiation rite.

Fearful of leaving any base uncovered, Davey told us again that the Lib Dems want an unspecified closer relationship with Europe, and are in favour of decency and compassion. Did we also need to hear that he hopes and prays for Kamala Harris to win the US election? The Lib Dems are a broad church, but it seems unlikely there were a lot of Trump supporters in the hall.

Not all of it was obvious. The party currently faces an interesting question about its future direction: will it focus its fire on Labour, the party that is actually in government, or the Tories, its target of recent years? “Our job,” Davey explained, “is to consign the Conservative Party to the history books.” Whoever becomes Tory leader will have to continue fighting on multiple fronts.

The worldlier of us could see where this was going, and decided to flee the building before the inevitable police siege

For all that, there were some items left out. Although there was talk about the terrible elections of 2015, and 2017, and 2019, there was no engagement with the thing that the Lib Dems did in 2010 that led to these calamities. The closest we got was mention of “trust, the single most powerful commodity in a democracy.” There were mentions of Charles Kennedy and Paddy Ashdown, but no word of former cult leader Nick Clegg, who may or may not have tuned-in from the California mansion where he lives out his exile.

By minute 40, the mind was beginning to wander. “You are the antidote to hate and division!” Davey told the room, pausing for applause. Get on with it, some of us muttered, but there was much more self-congratulation to come.

Finally the ceremony had reached its climax. As Davey finished, party members fired off glitter cannons filled with yellow paper. The speaker system blasted out Sweet Caroline, and Davey danced on stage. To our mounting horror, we saw that behind the cult leader the MPs were beginning to dance themselves and, far worse, actually sing along.

The worldlier of us could see where this was going, and decided to flee the building before the inevitable police siege. Loud noises indeed.