THE man in front of me in the queue to squeeze into the Labour conference hall in end-of-season Brighton was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned, “Where is the outrage?” We didn’t need to look far. The major key of the Corbynite melody is outrage, at “greedy bosses”, “the rich and powerful”, “tax exiles” and, the crowd’s favourite, “a failed dogma of neoliberalism”.

But this was a day when Jezza’s Greatest Hits were the playlist of choice for an invigorated audience. Applause as Mr Corbyn strode onto the podium was deafening and continued for the best part of five minutes. “Might we bring this conference to order?” wheedled Labour’s leader, lapping it up.

This year’s gathering of the clans was the coronation of Mr Corbyn in the wake of his successful insurgency in the general election in June. It also marks the formal surrender of Labour moderates, who were absent, demoted or consigned to the Siberian outer reaches of the event. MPs weren’t even allowed to step over a rope on the conference floor. “I feel like I’m in a nightclub that won’t let me in,” moaned one veteran.

A more confident speaker these days, Mr Corbyn has lost his paralysed fear of the autocue. He started with a bucketload of flattery for the troops. “The star of the campaign was you,” cried Mr Corbyn. “You are the future!” The overall effect was like a school speech-ceremony, addressed by a too oleaginous guest speaker. Labour activists had all done very marvellously, as long as they supported Jeremy.

For a party that traditionally recounts its historic achievement in speeches, paying tribute to its ancestors, there was one other striking departure this year. Former leaders were not mentioned at all—disappeared, like any other inconveniences, from the Corbynite vision of an ur-socialism on British soil.

Occasional signs of a spin-doctor’s touch have crept in, however. Mr Corbyn’s beard is now as neatly clipped as that of a Hoxton hipster. Coyly, he has taken to referring to the part of north London he represents in Parliament as “Finsbury Park”, rather than its official name of Islington North (smug Islington lefties being something of a standing joke in the pantheon of British political humour.)

Some moments caught the heart as well as the self-satisfaction of the crowd. A well-calibrated passage on the Grenfell Tower tragedy in London, in which a social-housing block caught fire, resulting in scores of casualties, was the sign of a “brutal, less caring society”. That will resonate.

Such insights were mercilessly milked, too, for ideological effect. So we segued neatly into a denunciation of gentrification and developers. All whistle-blowers had noble intentions. Commitments to re-nationalise utilities and expand public ownership of industry followed. Not long ago, this degree of ambition on the left would have been derided as fantasy, along the lines of the comical ditty by the late Alex Glasgow (an Old Labour folk singer), who sang, “As soon as this pub closes, the revolution starts.” The fringe of Labour thought has become the mainstream.

Brexit position, anyone? We got a thick fog of reassurances about everyone’s rights as Britain leaves the EU, and learned that Labour in power would not be an “inept negotiating team” (good to know). Migrants were not responsible for Blighty’s problems (also nice to hear). Not an EU-compliant sausage about what Labour’s approach to staying in or out of the single market would entail.

Street-fighting man landed a good few blows on the government. The charge of a “coalition of chaos”, lobbed by the Tories at Labour was sent squarely back towards the prime minister’s squabbling cabinet. Labour audiences love this as much as the Tories relish parading Labour’s incompetence.

But the cultural drivers of Corbynism are not just about the old Punch and Judy show between mainstream parties. This is something different. On the fringe, I spotted an “acid Corbynism” event. It turned out to be a very long seminar on the delights of Venezuela and public ownership, with a bit of random dancing attached. The Corbynite faith also preaches a kind of freedom, from the perils of the markets, the orthodoxies of your parents’ politics and the belief that all sorts of bad things can be turned into good ones easily, if only enough people believed in Jeremy and the rich were taxed more.

It revives one of the oldest radical desires in the world: Utopian socialism, without the fun-killing authoritarianism in tow. Even without the acid, they’re pretty sure here in Brighton that Mr Corbyn is bringing it on.