Smooth, confident and in full control ... until the veneer starts to crack

In his early days as Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn looked miserable. Put upon. Defeated. As though he would gratefully throw in the towel and trudge back to his allotment, if only his handlers would let him. Not any more. Today, the Labour Party is under his full control. The critics have been silenced, the traitors vanquished. Mr Corbyn is in charge. And he is, quite visibly, revelling in it.

You can hardly blame him. Everywhere he goes – at Labour conference, at any rate – dazzled fans sing his name.

To quote the headline from Monday’s Daily Mirror: “Jeremy Corbyn Signs Life-size Jeremy Corbyn While Rapturous Crowd Chant ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn’.”

Yesterday, he swanned onstage to give his big conference speech. I remember his first conference speech as leader, back in 2015. The confused rambling. The strange-man-at-thebus-stop muttering. The Open University suit.

Nothing like that here. He looked, and sounded, like a man transformed. He was confident. Polished. Smooth.

He began by purring a romantic message in Spanish to his Mexican wife (“Tu eres mi fuerza y mi apoyo, Laurita!”). He fired off a snappy one-liner (“The Tories dream of a Britannia that rules the waves – and waives the rules!”). He read from his teleprompter like a seasoned pro. He grinned. It was quite something. His swagger was almost showbizzy. In a strange sort of way, it felt at times like listening to a DJ from Eighties Radio 1: the Smashie & Nicey years.

When rattling off Labour’s most recent local election triumphs (Plymouth! Trafford! Kirklees!), he sounded like Bruno Brookes presenting the Top 40.

And when reading out letters from members of the public, sharing their stories of life under Tory austerity, he sounded like Simon Bates doing “Our Tune”. The lowered voice, almost a whisper. The pauses for dramatic effect. The head-shaking sorrow at the sheer, heartbreaking cruelty of the world. The makeover, though, is not entirely complete. Every now and again, the veneer would crack – and the old Corbyn, the Corbyn we used to know, would poke angrily through.

Especially when talking about Labour’s anti-semitism scandal. Here, his tone lurched from self-pity (“It’s been a tough summer”) to piousness (“Anti-racism is part of who I am”) to resentful, snaggle-toothed rattiness (“Tory hypocrites!”).

Then there was his obligatory two-minute denunciation of the press (“Spreading lies and half-truths … Their propaganda of privilege…”). It was like watching a Quorn version of Donald Trump. Obviously the fans loved it. They cheered his pledge to recognise a Palestinian state, booed his references to Jacob Rees-mogg and tax cuts, and, when he demanded that Theresa May stand aside and let him take power, they burst into a full 30 seconds of “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn”.

A particular treat was watching the shadow cabinet, leaping up to applaud their leader every time the audience did. Their haste looked almost panicky. Probably wise, though. You wouldn’t want to be the one seen to leap up last.