The policy announcements might have been underwhelming and Keir Starmer’s ninety-minute leader’s speech a drawn-out nonevent, but the Labour leadership did at least come away from this year’s party conference with something to crow about – namely, further marginalizing its rank-and-file membership and resuming the hollowing-out of its internal party democracy after the brief, tentative aberration of the Jeremy Corbyn years. Needless to say, in doing so, it was enthusiastically applauded by the clapping seals of the Westminster lobby.

In Brighton, battles over policy tended to be overshadowed by those over rule changes, with many wondering what rabbits the party leadership would pull out of its hat. Sure enough, the Labour right went straight for its holy grail — bringing back the electoral college for leadership elections, with a third of the vote for constituency parties, affiliated trade unions, and the Parliamentary Labour Party. This would have given the latter an effective veto, thereby blocking left-wing candidates from ever winning Labour leadership again.

But Starmer and his allies had failed to get all their ducks in a row, with seemingly little effort devoted to consulting trade union leaders in advance. As a result, Starmer was reportedly subjected to a tongue-lashing at the pre-conference TULO meeting, described by observers as a “car crash.” However, the Right did have a fallback position and eventually succeeded — albeit narrowly — in getting the nominations threshold for leadership candidates raised to 20 percent, a bar almost certainly too high for the Socialist Campaign Group to reach.