Arms held out, a forced smile, and a Fatboy Slim song fading out in the background.
Sir Keir Starmer had taken the messiah complex of Tony Blair, the facial expressions of a constipated Gordon Brown and the music David Cameron bops to at his Chipping Norton soirés.
His one joke was referring to Boris Johnson as a tool, after it was decided that calling the Tories scum was too severe, falling somewhere between wazzock and helmet on the rudeness scale.
His one slogan was getting tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime.
Heckled
The speech had a sinking feeling from the start, with the massed ranks in open conflict as they through piercing heckles.
Is it the “shouting slogans or changing lives conference?”, he replied to one of the first. It was a planned line, which means he must have been expecting it.
He normally gets this from the Tories at midday on a Wednesday, was his second. He must have been a barrage of abuse.
The hall was split in half, part standing ovation, part glued to their seats.
It was the ‘Ready Steady Cook’ judgment of his popularity, his detractors even held up red cards, although there were no green peppers in sight.
Rotten tomato
But was this a rotten tomato of a speech?
We want fairer politics, he said.
“Where is Peter Mandelson,” someone shouted out. Backstage, in a darkened corner, with his fingers tapping like a Bond villain, would be my guess.
Starmer told a story about his dying mother who worked for the NHS. That wouldn’t stop the hecklers though. Your dying parent won’t save you, lad.
It was callous and brutal.
The Labour leader said he would stop job insecurity if he got into power. “What about the £15 an hour,” another shouted.
Even a baby cried on the odd occasion a heckler didn’t fill in the natural pauses of his speech. Was this a crying Corbynista? Get her fingerprint, we don’t want their type at the next conference.
Emotional heartstrings
What didn’t get heckled would be easier to cover.
Doreen Lawrence was a safe space so he mentioned her quite a few times, but he kept his emotional heartstrings for John and Penny.
Their daughter had been stabbed, multiple times, to death by her partner. The brave couple stood up and the crowd gave them a standing ovation and cheered. It was moving and awkward in equal measure.
So what does he stand for?
Tough on crime, big on education, bless the NHS, the party of NATO, true patriots, get Brexit done and not one mention of Socialism.
Fast forward a week and Boris Johnson will be saying pretty much the same thing.
Policy announcement
One of the only policies I picked out was that every pupil will get to meet a careers advisor. I was lucky enough to meet one in my time in state education, and it was the most wasted half-hour of my life.
The biggest cheer was for Mark Drakeford, but after the applause died down even that was heckled.
Starmer ended the speech by looking back and listing all the success of the Blair years. He didn’t mention the Iraq war, surprisingly.
The suits have their party back, whether Starmer is at the helm isn’t the point.
The hecklers will die off, they will switch to the Greens, flirt with Gina Miller’s new party or just focus on trolling Blairites on Twitter.
Winning is more important than unity is Starmer’s mantra, but in unity there is strength, and that’s how you overcome your adversaries.
The question for Starmer is are the real enemy the Tories or the Left-wing.
Related: Starmer shrugs off hecklers, takes on ‘trivial’ Tories in conference speech