Outside the Labour conference hall in Liverpool, the winds were up and the rain pouring down.

Back in the City of London, the markets were still in turmoil as tensions flared between the prime minister and chancellor about how to handle the fallout from their (non-)budget.

But if these are turbulent times, inside the conference hall, Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer was a man carrying a calm sense of confidence. This was a leader who thinks his moment has arrived.

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It was so different to a year ago, when Sir Keir was heckled in the hall by the Labour left as he delivered his leader’s speech and his supporters were drafted in to try to drown out the criticism with cheers.

Those battles over, the ground won. This was a leader placing Labour firmly in the centre ground and taking aim at Tory territory, pitching to be the party of economic competence, business and aspiration.

And Sir Keir was so different too: I remember back in May 2021 when Labour suffered that not just a humiliating by-election defeat in Hartlepool – the former heartland town electing the first Tory MP for the first time in 62 years – but also a slew of losses in local elections across the red wall.

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As Boris Johnson embarked on a tour of his new territory in the West Midlands and Hartlepool, Sir Keir remained holed up in London. There was no victory lap to be had anywhere in the country. It was a real low point, a raw moment for the Labour leader. And it took time to build back.

But on Tuesday, the Labour leader cut a different figure. He was serious, assured and definitely not second-guessing himself. He became increasingly confident throughout the summer as his nemesis Mr Johnson was deposed, and the new Conservative administration’s woes seem to have shifted to the next gear.

Hope has given way to belief. If you take one thing away from this conference, it is that this is now a party that believes – from top to bottom – it can win the next general election.

This is what Angela Rayner, the deputy leader, told me when I asked if she had a message for Liz Truss: “Do not completely trash the country before we take over and make it better.”

Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow business secretary, told me that this was the best party conference he’d ever been to, and he’s been coming since 1999.

This one was for him the best since the days of Tony Blair, because “of what it means for the country to have a party that can replace the Conservatives”.

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Sir Keir has always refused to be cast in the clothes of any past Labour leader, but in this speech on Tuesday he positioned himself as the heir of Blair, even quoting the former prime minister’s own words when he described Labour as the “political wing of the British people”.

Labour was a party of the aspiration, of economic responsibility, of the centre ground. These all things Sir Keir would have struggled to say a year ago – now being cheered.

“The party is unified,” said one senior figure of the left of the party. “We have been out of power for 12 years, we can’t do any more time in opposition. You can still be centre ground and be radical.”

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And there were radical ideas in this speech, the most eye-catching of which was the plan for a Labour government to set up a publicly owned energy group – Great British Energy – with the ability to invest directly in renewable energy and nuclear projects within the first year of being in power.

That confidence is also being driven by polling, with a YouGov poll on Monday that put Labour on a 17 point lead against the Tories – its biggest poll lead in two decades – prompting jubilation in Liverpool.

But there is unease too that Sir Keir’s success is down to Tory failures rather than a change in fortunes between the party and the electorate, and a fear that the gains made could be undone if the Conservative government begins to please voters again. A quiet acknowledgement, if you like, that Sir Keir still hasn’t sealed the deal with the electorate.

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When I asked Ms Rayner if the public were looking again at Labour but still don’t love Labour, she was – typically – pretty forthright. “Yes, and you know nobody is complacent. And we all know that in 2019 we’ve got a real kicking. The public didn’t see us as the future, but now they’re seeing what the Conservatives have done.”

The sinking feeling of defeat that’s plagued Labour since 2010 is now settling on the Conservative Party – a spectacle unimaginable back in 2019 when Mr Johnson romped home with an 80-seat majority and the chance to run the country for another two terms.

Now Labour has a chance to win those voters back with Sir Keir’s brand of patriotism, integrity and seriousness. As the Labour leader himself put it on Tuesday night as he addressed journalists and party members at the annual Mirror party: “You can get a sense of the political weather, the temperature, what I think about this conference is it has a different feel to it, the Labour Party is confident.”

An election is still two years away, but Labour now with a genuine opportunity to get into government. After 12 years out of power, is the tide finally about to turn?

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