Labour election rally buzzing - up to a point

Who knew there were two communist-themed bars in Liverpool's Albert Docks, practically next door to each other?

Not this reporter, that's for sure. Or the handful of Labour activists milling about in the Revolution Bar, waiting for the start of what had been billed as a general election rally.

It did not take us long to realise our mistake and we were soon joining the much larger crowd at an upstairs bar in Revolution de Cuba, where organisers LabourList, a news website for Labour folk, had laid on a free bar and a packed programme of speakers.

There was a nervous buzz in the air - a sense that victory was within their grasp but that they could still mess it all up.

MP Stella Creasey compared it to being 2-0 up after 70 minutes. Others spoke about the need to avoid complacency. Labour's West of England mayor Dan Norris warned that although the Tories were "hated", it was "not correct to say Labour is loved - we have work to do".

There was some call and response ("are we going to win? Yes!") and much jubilation about last week's Rutherglen by-election victory and anticipation of more by-election success to come.

Labour MP Barry Gardiner got the crowd going with some old school Tory-bashing and a few risque jokes.

Fellow MP and shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock laid into the "clown show that is currently governing our country" who he said had "debased our politics" at their conference last week in Manchester.

There was talk about how this year's conference was "buzzing", with up to 17,000 attendees - in stark contrast the Tories' "car crash" gathering.

But several speakers began by saying it was wrong to say Labour had no policies - just look at their National Policy Forum programme - and then stressed that a Labour government would be different to the Tories, and would truly transform lives.

Labour conference rallies during the Jeremy Corbyn years tended be wilder affairs - but the majority of Corbyn supporters have now drifted off to their own parallel event, the World Transformed.

The ones that remain must feel they have also turned up at the wrong revolution.

"It's quite a different crowd this year," said Bert Jones, a Labour councillor from Redbridge in London., as he was leaving the LabourList event. "I find it business-like."

He said he had "stuck his neck out for Corbyn" at his local Labour branch - but was now a Keir Starmer supporter.

He liked the "non partisan" atmosphere at the LabourList election rally, which made a change from the drama and divisions of the Corbyn years, although he sounded slightly wistful.

"You have to compromise to get into power," he said.

"We are feeling really optimistic, there is definitely a change in the air."

Uzma Rasool, a Labour councillor from Waltham Forest, said: "It feels much more driven, organised and on message."

But there was still passion - supplied by deputy leader Angela Rayner - and Ms Rasool and her friend Frankie Romer, from Harrogate were quick to point out.

Ms Rayner had been due to be star attraction at the LabourList rally, but she couldn't make it in the end.

As the crowd in Revolution de Cuba dwindled, the speakers kept on coming - dozens of Prospective Parliamentary Candidates urging other activists to join them on the general election campaign trail.

For this party, it can't come soon enough.