Lib Dems leave conference season in the best shape – but all the main parties have issues to solve ahead of an election

Inside Westminster: Potential strategies are starting to emerge about how the battle for voters will be fought, but beneath the bluster there are worries that Swinson, Corbyn and Johnson must face

The annual conferences of the three main UK parties have given us some valuable clues about how they will fight the coming election. The Liberal Democrats emerged as the most united and confident. They have momentum after electoral gains this year and recruiting some former Labour and Tory MPs. They are closing in on Labour; a “poll of polls” puts the Tories on 33 per cent, Labour on 24 per cent, the Lib Dems on 22 per cent and the Brexit Party on 14 per cent.

They have an energetic new leader in Jo Swinson. She is aiming high, telling her party’s Bournemouth conference she is a “candidate for prime minister” as she hopes to beat the squeeze that traditionally afflicts the third party when the election becomes a choice of two prime ministers. Boris Johnson will certainly frame it as a presidential contest between him and Jeremy Corbyn. Swinson’s antidote is boldness – a clear pledge to cancel Brexit in an attempt to hoover up the Remain vote. It’s high risk; overturning the 2016 referendum without another one could alienate some voters.

Although tactical anti-Tory voting and electoral pacts with the Greens and Plaid Cymru could help the Lib Dems, they know they would never have to revoke Article 50 as Swinson is not going to become PM. Privately, some party figures fear another false dawn, as progressives with doubts about Corbyn “hold their nose” and support Labour as the best way to defeat the Tories.

The best the Lib Dems can probably hope for is to be a moderating influence on a minority Labour government. Despite real animosity between the two parties, they would agree on one thing: a Final Say referendum.

In contrast, Corbyn’s Brexit policy is fuzzy. He saw off an attempt at Labour’s conference to come out for Remain, but only by making it a loyalty test. The Brighton gathering showed that Labour is not a happy ship. It unveiled policies that signalled a more radical manifesto than in 2017, to counter Tory claims that “austerity is over”. But they were overshadowed by infighting. Simmering tensions boiled over with a botched attempt to abolish Tom Watson’s deputy leadership post.

It became clear that Labour will combat Tory attacks on Corbyn by branding Johnson the figurehead of a privileged elite. But the party should beware: class war might warm the hearts of Labour’s troops but leave aspirational voters cold.

Unity broke out only when the Supreme Court ruled Johnson’s decision to suspend parliament as unlawful, reminding a fractious, inward-looking party of the real enemy. Corbyn made a good, hastily rewritten speech in response. “Much better than the one he was going to make,” quipped one Labour adviser.

Yet Labour left Brighton saddled with a Brexit policy that many MPs regard as impossible to sell on the doorstep. Corbyn would remain neutral in a referendum with a choice between a soft-Brexit Labour deal and Remain. Another attempt to go full-on Remain will be made when Labour’s manifesto is written. But one prominent Remainer told me: “It’s over; we’ve lost.”

Amid disastrous poll ratings for Labour and its leader, it looked to me like a party preparing not for government, but defeat and the post-Corbyn era.

Normally, a party with a healthy poll lead would feel confident on the eve of an election. At their conference, most Tories felt they had a leader in Johnson they can believe in and who could beat Corbyn. Yet uncertainty over what will happen next on Brexit left some Tories apprehensive. They wanted to know how the prime minister could take the UK out of the EU on 31 October and yet still obey the Benn Act forcing him to seek an extension if there is no deal. Answers came there none in Manchester.

In his speech, Johnson tried to reassure moderate Tories he was not a British Trump, and still a One Nation conservative. Yet his aggressive Commons language, readiness to opt for no deal and withdrawal of the whip from 21 Tory MPs, left Tory moderates unconvinced. Rory Stewart’s resignation from the party is a big, symbolic setback for Johnson, who has already lost the services of Ruth Davidson and Amber Rudd.

If the Tories are looking like a narrow, pro-Brexit party, that is because their electoral strategy is to squeeze the real one led by Nigel Farage. Johnson is chasing Labour Leave voters in the north and midlands. Yet a nagging doubt dogged Tory activists in Manchester: Theresa May tried that in 2017, and failed. Tory candidates in the south fear the party is neglecting its natural base.

As one Tory told me: “Boris is gambling on winning the support of people who have never voted for the party, and might lose a lot of people who have always voted for us.”

A reminder that, while we know more about how the parties will fight it, the election is unpredictable, and wide open.