I was planning to rest my usual party conference report for non-political types. But the media narrative around Labour’s Liverpool gathering – even from those who should know better – has annoyed me, so here it is. John Harris cites a Times headline and standfirst – ‘Labour’s celebration conference felt more like a wake…what should have been Keir Starmer’s first truly triumphant event’. I am not sure what planet the Times subeditors are living on, for no one serious would have expected a triumphalist week on the Mersey. What did they think was going to happen? Neil Kinnock yelling ‘We’re alright! We’re alright! We’re alright!’ This isn’t 1992, nor is it 1997.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: party conferences are not ‘a bubble’, they are more like a fizzy drink with lots and lots of individual bubbles held together with syrup. Labour may not have flavoured the syrup that well this summer, but the bubbles still remain.

This was not the time for a conference. At its most basic, there were three types of people in Liverpool: journalists, party members and people trying to gain intelligence of and perhaps provide evidence to influence Labour’s plans. All of them in their own bubble. Much of the first group didn’t want to be there and complained about the rain and Labour’s declarations of gifts. They don’t want a conference, they want news and drama to report. Rows, they like, policy discussions not so much. But the other groups do want these discussions. Problem was, for them conference was too late or too early – party members might have wanted to party in July but are now wanting to knuckle down and solve the myriad challenges they have inherited. Business types aren’t going to get the information they need until the Budget. So there were big questions, which no one could really answer. This led to some of the reported disquiet from the business community, though for what it’s worth the ministers at the fringes I attended were informed and engaged, and Labour’s class of 2024 includes some seriously talented and bright backbenchers. (How the party will deploy them to best effect is still unclear.)

None of this is to play down Labour’s considerable problems. At the recent PRCA conference, Tara Singh quoted John McTernan saying that the new government is behaving like accountants when they should be behaving like economists. Keir Starmer’s speech notwithstanding (and for what it’s worth I wasn’t convinced), there’s a vacuum where a narrative should be, which has been filled on social media by memes taking advantage of the means testing of the winter fuel allowance on one hand and the disquiet about freebies. And there are questions about delivery and party management. No individual’s bubble at conference will tell them how the wind’s blowing on any of these matters. If Labour don’t make progress against the missions by this time next year, the flavouring of the conference syrup will be the least of Keir Starmer’s problems.