Labour Conference: The production of Corbyn's speech was slick – the product was not

If Labour Conference 2017 was a festival, someone should have pulled the plug on the headliner long ago

You only begin to understand the cult of Corbynism once you understand that his followers don’t care that he is useless (PA)

“Water for the young and railways for the old and justice for the nurses and rent controls for the Yemenis and a fair wage for robots and why doesn’t the Secretary General of the United Nations go to Pyongyang and read them a poem by Ben Okri and Happy Birthday Dear Diane which you won’t read about in the mainstream media AND LABOUR WILL WIN FOR THE MANY NOT THE FEW! THANK YOU!”

I think that’s it verbatim, give or take the odd 5,943 words. If it is really true that Labour Conference 2017 was a “festival”, as some have called it, well they can expect a call from the police because someone should have pulled the plug on the headliner a long time ago.

An Opposition leader’s conference speech when it might be almost five years to the next election doesn’t matter all that much. But there is that word momentum that they like down here, and for all the Corbyn scarf waving, the Seven Nation Army chanting, and the really rather spine-tingling video inserts, this speech was a giant leap backwards. A 73-minute-long return of the Jeremy Corbyn we did not see once during that wildly successful election campaign.

You only begin to understand the cult of Corbynism once you understand that his followers don’t care that he is useless. His incoherence, his slow meandering around the pasture of sixth-form left-wing intellectual thought, are because he is “authentic”, “unpolished”, “not media-trained”, that sort of thing.

But it wasn’t the cult of Corbynism that delivered the Labour Party to the place it has been this week: which is upbeat, optimistic and exuding a sense that government awaits, quite possibly soon. It was those six glorious weeks in April, May and June that did that.That happy spring when Theresa May went mad and Corbyn held his nerve in front of the TV cameras, and suddenly began to appeal not just to student socialists but also to that rather larger contingent of people who in fact don’t want their Prime Minister to exude a general air of incompetence.

On that front, this speech has delivered Labour closer back to where it began.

The branding couldn’t have been slicker. The lengthy buildup had a banging playlist. Elbow, early Motown, even a bit of that well known anti-capitalist Taylor Swift. The moments before Corbyn’s arrival were filled with loud bass and spectacular wide shots of the back of a humble pensioner's head calling forth the full rapture of the Glastonbury crowd.

But in to this brave new world, last year’s man emerged for a gentle trot round every issue facing Britain and the world.

Britain must be America’s “candid friend” he said, the implication being Donald Trump won’t listen to Theresa May, but will listen to Jeremy Corbyn. This seems far fetched.

One minute we were in Yemen, the next it was Aung San Suu Kyi. Then it was the rise of automation and the return of “rent controls” to clamp down on private agencies profiteering on social housing in rogue councils many of which unfortunately happen to be Labour controlled.

At one point Theresa May was accused of “shaking the magic money tree” from which fell £1bn for the Democratic Unionist Party. Trouble is, anyone who shakes the magic money tree will find Jeremy Corbyn living in it, in his magic money tree house, drinking his magic money matcha tea, eating his magic money falafel. There was “money for teachers”, “money for doctors”, “money for health service workers”, “ money for schools”, money to “invest in the new economy”, which was apparently going to “replace the failed doctrine of new Liberalism.” There was money for climate change, money for automation, money for the Equality Commission to end the gender pay gap.

Who knows what’s going to happen over the next few years. So many are the variables, so high the stakes, it’s pointless attempting to predict. But of all the varying paths through the future, a particularly likely one has no election on it before June 2022. On this evidence, Jeremy Corbyn will still be banging out the tunes by then, but the festival could be over.