John McDonnell’s speech showed Labour is now comfortable in its new skin

If you wanted a clue to how much the Labour Party has changed over the past few years, you wouldn’t have had to sit through much more than the first few lines of John McDonnell’s conference speech. He started it with the words ‘I’d like to thank Ken Loach for that wonderful film’. Loach hasn’t been the most loyal supporter of the Labour Party over the years, but is now firmly back in the fold thanks to Jeremy Corbyn. Party members, normally tribally opposed to those who set up rival parties, gave the veteran filmmaker a standing ovation.

The Labour Party has been changing for a while, but this conference is showing that it is now comfortably settled into its new Corbynite skin. Loach’s film had been preceded by a delighted reception for Dennis Skinner, and was followed by McDonnell’s speech in which he pointed out how many people had been wrong about Labour’s political prognosis in the tones of a man whose party had just won an election, rather than lost it pretty well.