What a difference six months makes. The political landscape is barely recognisable from the day Theresa May stood in Downing Street to announce a snap general election. The pundits expected a Tory landslide. The election would strengthen the government’s hand in the Brexit negotiations and stabilise the country, they agreed. Labour faced oblivion.

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The country thought otherwise. May’s claim to be “strong and stable” went from mantra to millstone. The Tories were found wanting on all of the big issues facing our country. Her government was shown to be strong only against the weak, unwilling to stand up to the powerful and the elite.

The Tory manifesto was shredded almost overnight, as Conservative activists huddled in empty halls. Labour, meanwhile, relished the battle and seized the chance to campaign for our manifesto to end austerity and transform society.

We didn’t succeed in winning a Labour majority and we need to do more to build trust and support. But we achieved the biggest increase in Labour’s vote since 1945, and the Conservatives lost their majority. The election campaign demonstrated the thirst for real change across Britain.

We changed the debate and we have set the political agenda. The government has had to drop one damaging policy after another – from ditching free school meals to means-testing winter fuel payments for the elderly. The policies we campaigned for attracted support because they are what most people actually want.

We have changed the political centre of gravity. We are now the political mainstream and have the chance to transform our country. To do that we must use our new strength inside and outside parliament to challenge the Conservatives at every step – and prepare to form a government to change Britain when the next election is called.

The Tories are weak and divided. They have no mandate for what they are doing. Wherever we can, we will block their attempts to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy by making life worse for millions of people in the name of austerity.

We are in a moment of great change – in the economy, politics and across the world. Our challenge is to marshal these forces of change for the real wealth creators – that means all of us. And our mission must be to work with the people of Britain to transfer wealth, power and opportunity to the many from the few. For the first time in a long time, we can provide a politics of hope and a politics for the people.

We are now on a permanent campaign footing. Labour membership has almost tripled to 570,000 in the last two years. Contrast that with the Conservatives, who have few members and are backed by hedge funds and billionaires, not millions of working-class people.

Since losing their majority, the Conservatives have gone for power grab after power grab to stay in office, propping themselves up with a tawdry £1bn deal with the Democratic Unionist party.

The next Labour government will be different. To earn the trust of the people of our country, we must show that we mean it when we say we hand power back to the people. For the first time in years, we are handing our conference back to our members. Politics isn’t some technical specialism for an elite. Politics is about us all coming together to decide our futures. Taking back power for the many should be fun and exhilarating. We aren’t a lobbyists’ playground. This will be a real conference whose decisions matter.

Labour is preparing for government and we are already deepening and extending the policies we set out in our election manifesto. It is Labour, not the Tories, who are prepared to tackle the long-term challenges facing our country, including automation, the threat to the environment, health costs and an ageing population.

The disarray at the heart of government is painful to see: from the public sector pay cap to tuition fees, Tory ministers are flip-flopping and incoherent. When we brought these issues to the Commons recently, the government was forced to concede it did not have a majority and refused to vote.

May is leading a weak government at a critical time for our country’s future. Fifteen months after the EU referendum, the government is still floundering over what to do about Brexit. It was evident in Florence on Friday that the prime minister is still no clearer about what our long-term relationship with the EU will look like.

The only advance seems to be that she has listened to Labour and faced up to the reality that Britain needs a transition on the same basic terms to provide security for jobs and the economy, though May and her cabinet are spending more time negotiating with each other than with the EU.

The Tories have made abundantly clear they want to use Brexit to deregulate and cut taxes for the wealthy. Labour is making the case instead for a jobs-first Brexit that prioritises access to European markets, uses powers returned from Brussels to invest and upgrade Britain’s economy, and protects and extends workers’ and consumer rights and environmental standards.

We will not accept any Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership-style deregulation and investor protection deals with the Trump administration, which is what this Tory government wants to use Brexit for. No wonder it is relying on a power grab through their EU withdrawal bill in an attempt to bypass democracy and steamroller through their race-to-the-bottom approach.

The commentators wrote us off in April. But the election and the months that followed have proved people do not have to accept the establishment’s rules of the game, or what they’re told is inevitable.

We do not have to accept that millions of people are in work but in poverty. We do not have to accept rising homelessness, food banks and zero-hour contracts. We do not have to accept rip-off energy prices or austerity without end. As I said when I was first elected leader two years ago, things can, and will, change.

We remain in opposition, for now. But we are a government in waiting. Politics has changed and Labour has driven that change.