LABOUR delegates cheered calls to confront Russia made by belligerent Defence Secretary John Healey and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper at party conference.

Mr Healey won a rare mid-speech standing ovation when he said the conference should send a message to Moscow: “President Putin, stop the war, agree a peace, we will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

His speech was largely devoted to the Ukraine conflict, saying that Britain needed “a strong, sovereign Ukraine” and boasted that the Labour government had sent “the highest ever level of military aid to Ukraine this year.”

Ms Cooper too ramped up the war rhetoric in her own speech, saying that “if we need to confront planes in Nato airspace without permission, then we will do so, because this party should be very proud that in Ukraine’s greatest time of need” President Zelensky “and the Ukrainian people have had no better friends than our country, our government and our Prime Minister, Keir Starmer.”

She accused Reform of “trotting out Russian propaganda,” almost the only line of attack on the hard-right party which the government seems comfortable with.

Mr Healey also sought to build the domestic base of support for this war policy by listing the communities across Britain benefitting from soaring arms spending, from Barrow to Plymouth, Swindon to Birkenhead.

To all appearances, conference was united in affecting to believe all of this was a good thing.