The Labour party is changing, at an alarming rate. At a lunchtime Channel 4 fringe I listened to one of the party's rising stars. He is the son of a wealthy entrepreneur, the grandson of the high court judge Sir Helenus Milmo; he went to public school and became a corporate lawyer who buys his suits at Savile Row. In short, a toff rather than a pleb. He isn't one of the traditional conference-goers, a half of bitter at his elbow, a fag in his mouth, working out the block vote figures on a damp beermat.

But he is also Chuka Umunna, the shadow business secretary, tipped as the party's first black leader (his mother was half English, half Irish, his father Nigerian). There is a certain Tony Blair-style glossiness to him: shiny skin, plausible manner, ready smile. He sounds relaxed, matey, more at home on a breakfast TV sofa than at a lectern. He won't have to wait long for more preferment: I have seen the future, and it lurks.

Then at the start of the conference proper we heard from Michael Sandel, like Ed Miliband a Harvard lecturer. Miliband likes gurus, and this one is a corker. "He fills football stadiums in Asia," the Labour leader told us, though I doubt that he would fill many here. ("We are pleased to announce that the match against Chelsea has been postponed. Instead we are going to hear a Harvard professor discuss how much of our lives should be dictated by market forces.")

Mr Sandel made the point, for an hour (at dictation speed, for the benefit of any Chinese football fans in the audience), that some things shouldn't be paid for. Apparently prisoners in Santa Barbara, California, can upgrade their cells for $90 per night, which struck me as pretty good value if the alternative is sharing a cell with a 6ft 4in tattooed man whose favourite game is Mummies and Daddies.

Also, he was against children being given money to write thank-you letters. And he didn't like paid queue-jumping at the London Eye. Nor was he in favour of people buying their wedding speeches off the internet. It must be said that these topics have only rarely been raised at previous Labour party conferences. You cannot imagine Dennis Skinner bellowing, "And the Tories think you can raise your glasses to the happy couple, thanks to the web! We say, 'The Tories will be toast!'" Yvette Cooper, another future leader – she really does sound like a schoolteacher addressing a not very bright group of freshmen – introduced something called "Your Britain – Labour's online hub, an electronic town square".

Call me an old cynic, but I suspect this is a brilliant way for the party leadership to ignore the membership in bulk, instead of ignoring it one by one, as previously. And we saw the latest party election broadcast featuring schoolfriends of Ed Miliband and some of his students from Harvard (annual fees 2012-13: $57,950.) Clearly the university is taking over the party. Whoever filmed the broadcast seemed to be waving his camera about at random, and to have a close interest in facial skin blemishes, many of which filled the screen. As I say, alarming.