Jeremy Corbyn's speech was impressive but Labour isn't actually ready for government yet

Talking up the prospect of an early election keeps the party broadly united, but hostilities could resume when it realises there is not going to be one

The Labour leader delivered his key note speech to an enthusiastic party conference audience in Brighton (EPA)

Jeremy Corbyn’s confident closing speech to Labour’s conference showed that he is at the height of his powers. He has come a long way from the rather disorganised, bushy-bearded trade union official I met when I attended my first Labour conference in 1981, also in Brighton.

Then Corbyn toured the same hotels and jam-packed, sweaty meeting rooms where he was greeted like a messiah this week. Back then, he was the warm-up act when his hero and mentor Tony Benn was mobbed by his disciples.

Corbyn was a leading light in the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CPLD), along with Jon Lansman, who now chairs Momentum, the influential pro-Corbyn movement. In 1981, Benn lost a dramatic deputy leadership contest to Denis Healey by an eyebrow. But CPLD won changes to give unions and members the same voting share as MPs when the party elects its leader, ending the MPs’ monopoly. (Sound familiar? The MPs’ influence was also reduced this week under Corbyn’s reforms.)

But CPLD and the left were consigned to the wilderness after Neil Kinnock became leader in 1983, and further marginalised in the Blair-Brown era. Corbyn and his left-wing allies kept up the good fight at conference every year, but their fringe meetings were thinly attended. I remember the rows of empty chairs as left-wingers talked to themselves to keep their spirits up. If anyone had predicted then that Corbyn would become Labour leader, they would have been sent to the funny farm.

Fast-forward to today and I’m covering my 37th consecutive Labour conference. Corbyn has not only won control of his party but could also credibly claim that he stands “on the threshold of power” in the country. His speech capped a successful conference. It felt like a victory rally, but Corbyn deserved that after the June election.

True, it was not in the script for John McDonnell, the influential shadow Chancellor, to let slip at a fringe meeting there was scenario-planning for a “run on the pound” if Labour took office. But the most interesting thing was that the idea was taken seriously. If McDonnell had said that a year ago, he would have been laughed at as there was no prospect of Labour winning power. Today, the Conservatives are desperate to delay the next election until 2022 because they know Corbyn could easily become prime minister.

This week’s conference has reinforced the impression since June that the tide is with Labour. Corbyn argued powerfully that Grenfell Tower symbolised “a failed and broken system” as he promised rent controls, more rights for social housing tenants and to end “forced gentrification and social cleansing”.

There has been a vibrancy, energy and excitement in Brighton that I haven’t seen at any party conference for years. It has been a long wait for Corbyn, but boy has it been worth it. His internal critics are routed; the left now enjoys a decisive majority on Labour’s national executive committee for the first time since the early 1980s. The highly organised Momentum called the conference shots.

Even Corbyn’s critics admit they need to stop whingeing and to acknowledge the exciting elements of his project – even though they remain worried by the “bad stuff”, including what they claim is a blind spot about antisemitism. One Corbynsceptic MP admitted: “We are talking ourselves into depression; it’s no use whining that it’s all unfair.” They are now in the wilderness, as Corbyn & co were for 30 years. Power has shifted away from the Parliamentary Labour Party to the members, just as CLPD demanded back in 1981.

For now there is a ceasefire. Labour MPs now fall in behind Corbyn or keep their head down. There is no alternative to Corbynism within Labour.

But the truce is fragile. The rival tribes still exist and eye each other up. “Will you be loyal to Jeremy now?” his closest allies ask MPs. “Will you bring in mandatory reselection of MPs?” his critics fire back, fearing that Corbyn deploys the threat of being sacked by their local parties like a “sword of Damocles” to deter disloyalty.

Talking up the prospect of an early election keeps the party broadly united, but hostilities could resume when it realises there is not going to be one.

Corbyn critics suspect this week is as good as it will get for him, that we have reached “peak Corbyn.” In contrast, his allies insist his “common sense” revolution is only just beginning. That the manifesto in June is only the foundation stone for more radical policies as Labour champions what Corbyn called “a new consensus” emerging from the 2008 crash and years of austerity and becomes “the political mainstream”. Many of his MPs believe Labour can win but do not really agree with Corbyn’s declaration that the party is “ready for government”.

An awful lot has been done, but there is still a lot to do before Labour becomes a “government-in-waiting” in the voters’ eyes. The chances are that, because of a “Brexit effect”, the next election will be fought in a worse economic climate than now. Labour’s economic prospectus will not escape Tory and media scrutiny as it did in June. Rather than launch another raft of policies and spending commitments, the party would be wise to channel some of its undoubted energy into reassuring the people Corbyn still needs to win over to complete his remarkable journey.