As we sat down to begin our annual conference interview shortly after the prime minister had delivered his speech to party members, I asked Sir Keir Starmer how he was feeling? "Good," he said, "it was a speech I needed to give".

He was right to feel buoyed. After 15 months of being battered about in government, with ever-worsening polls, open challenges to his leadership and endless private grumbling from within his own government, the PM answered his critics in a speech that showed both his emotion and intent as he pitted his vision of Britain against that of Nigel Farage .

It was a dividing line that united his party behind him as he set up the battle at the next election between Labour and Reform, between, in his words, "decency or division, renewal or decline".

He also marched

See Full Page