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I only spent two days at the Labour Conference , because I had to be at a meeting in Ukraine on the EU ratification of the Paris Agreement on climate change.

My Yorkie mate Graham joked there’d probably be less conflict in the ex-Soviet state than in Liverpool. But this week we saw the wounds in our party begin to heal.

The leadership election led to a bruising and damaging three months. Now it looks like hatchets are being buried – and not in people’s heads.

And finally, Jeremy Corbyn actually looks like a leader. Some Bitterites want to continue the war despite being crushed in two leadership elections. But they’re few and far between.

My feeling was MPs want to make it work and return to the front bench. For the first time in years, Labour focused on announcing policies.

Jeremy promised “socialism for the 21st Century”.

That sounds suspiciously like my old slogan, “traditional values in a modern setting”. And he’s absolutely right to back policies and ideas for now, not 1983 or 1997.

A National Education Service for lifetime learning, taking trains back into public ownership, building a million homes – half of them council houses – investing £500bn in infrastructure, manufacturing and new industries and integrating health and social care.

We’ll need more policies like these to speak to the people and address their hopes, concerns and aspirations.

NHS founder Nye Bevan once said: “The language of priorities is the religion of socialism.” Our policies must meet this country’s and century’s priorities. To my mind, there’s still no greater priority than the NHS.

(Image: Getty)

During conference I was hobbling with a walking stick because I’d damaged my foot. It got so bad I had to go to A&E in Liverpool.

The nurses and doctors were wonderful, treating all in the same professional way based upon need and not ability to pay.

But the conditions under which they deliver their care are unacceptable. The entrance was full of elderly people on trolleys waiting for a bed.It was clear to me on that night that integrating health and care is vital to cater for our ageing population.

It was also a sharp reminder of how Cameron’s claim the NHS was “safe in our hands” was as big a lie as “we’re all in this together”.

But building a health and care system fit for the 21st century is going to require investment we’ve never contemplated before.

At the General Election, the amounts pledged by all parties to fund the NHS were totally inadequate. So why should we spend up to £100bn on a new generation of nuclear weapons designed to kill millions when we could divert that money to save and improve the lives of millions?

(Image: Christopher Furlong)

I’d make the same case for scrapping HS2, which will cost more than £55bn when some of the saved money would be better spent improving links between the East and West, from Liverpool to Hull and up to Newcastle. Compare Labour’s forward-thinking ideas to the intellectual desert that is Theresa May’s Tory party.

Ken Clarke rightly pointed out that she’s “running a government with no policies” and no one in her Cabinet “has the first idea of what they’re going to do next on the Brexit front”.

The only idea she has is bringing back grammar schools. Not so much socialism for the 21st century as division from the 20th century.

A bad policy – there’s no evidence it boosts the social mobility of poorer pupils. In fact, the education minister who closed the most grammar schools was Thatcher!

Mark my words, the DisMay Government will splutter along like an old jalopy until it runs out of gas or hits the Brexit wall.

So Labour needs to be ready with the strongest team and best ideas to be that Government-in-waiting. I hope those who left Jeremy now offer to go back to the front benches.

Liverpool saw Labour slowly come together. Now it must work together, to set the political agenda and make its case to the people to put us back in power.

As Liverpool’s favourite sons would say, it’s a long and winding road.

But we’re on our way.