14:50

The most likely best-attended fringe event today was one on Brexit featuring Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, and various other Labour MPs, queues for which snaked several hundred metres from the door. If the party leadership would rather not talk about the issue, members certainly do.

Starmer told the crammed room – a screen at the Odeon cinema adjoining the conference venue - that he wanted a final departure deal “that retains the benefits of the single market and the customs union”, and how this happened could be determined later. He said:

That is because the single market and the customs union are hugely important to the future of our country. How we achieve that, in my view, is secondary to the fact that we do achieve it. We can go up hill and down dale about what that means for the single market and the customs unions, go round the houses and have any number of models. For me, what matters is the outcome.

Sceptics might, of course, respond that access to these things without allowing continued freedom of movement, something Labour has not committed to, is not going to be accepted by the EU.

Starmer was perhaps lucky in that he wasn’t challenged on this by a largely remain-oriented crowd at the event, organised by the Labour Movement for Europe – the crowds meant it started late and he had to dash elsewhere before the questions began.

Starmer was, however, still there when the next speaker, Chuka Umunna, a leading light on the soft Brexit end of the party, served notice that this stance would not please everyone.

Umunna, who began by admitting he and his fellow ex-remainers “have been a right pain in the arse for Keir”, said that while he was pleased at Labour’s shift over the summer to call for continued membership of the single market and customs union during a transition period, “we need to go further still”. He went on: