Party time? Why Labour may strike a more upbeat note at conference

When Ellie Reeves opens the Labour conference, she will be the first Labour minister to do so since Harriet Harman walked off the stage in Brighton 15 years ago.

- Jessica Elgot

For the 20,000 Labour supporters flocking to Liverpool this year, it is in many ways the first chance at a victory party.

In No 10, there is a dilemma about how much ministers can embrace that sense of celebration - with a story to drive home about the dire state of Labour's inheritance and amid a background of weeks of turmoil over winter fuel allowance, donations and the prime minister's chief of staff.

But those close to Keir Starmer say he will use this moment to lean in to a sense of hope about what a Labour government can do - and to spell out the tangible change that he expects to deliver in the country over the next five years.

The message will be how an effective and serious government can be a "reckoning for populism".

It will be this allegation that Labour plans to hammer home against the Conservatives.

"Rightwing populism can be electorally successful, but it can never govern successfully, it's why [the Tories] ended up with five prime ministers in their 14 years," one senior aide said. "They increased sentences of prisoners and told voters they don't need to have a prison built near them and that results in a prison system about to collapse.

"For us, it is about saying that style of governance should never be allowed to run the country again." It will be also moment - they say - where the prime minister will lift his sights beyond the relentless pessimism of Labour's inheritance and say explicitly that Labour will not be held back by what has gone before.

"We will point to all the things that we can begin this autumn and that is the story we can tell - that we will not allow our inheritance to stop the work of change," one close adviser said.