Labour conference: now that's what you call a party The youth zone is packed, the atmosphere expectant and the session on how to win using social media just getting underway when Lisa Nandy, shadow minister for children, utters a mild threat. Tom Watson will be along soon, she says brightly, a man who "adds a touch of glamour" to modern Westminster. I crane forward. I associate Tom Watson with many things. Scourge of Murdoch. Deputy chair of Labour. An MP who resembles a slightly rumpled, pleased-with-himself toy bear. Unofficial shadow secretary for glamour? I look down again at the session's title: Tweet That! The exclamation mark sounds like a slight scream of desperation. It is a note that echoes all around the conference buildings in Manchester on Monday. Labour might be 10 points ahead in the polls, their biggest lead since Iain Duncan Smith was Tory leader, but the mood in the days and hours before Ed Miliband's speech is worried, muted, heavy with anticipation. The Labour leader's face beams from the cover of every publication you see here: serious and doe-eyed on The House, parliament's magazine; in profile, tongue peeping out, for Modern Gov; all large, crowded teeth in the caricature on the New Statesman, trying to contain Ed Balls, who is depicted as a bulldog on a leash. On page four of the conference programme he is giving his best blue steel (that's a Zoolander reference, politics people, not a Tory one): mild pout, mistily narrowed eyes. It's the seductive look of a man whose party knows this is his moment to connect with an electorate disillusioned not just with Labour, but with politics as a whole, an electorate that has yet to get to know him. A frightened awareness of this last fact fills the air. On Sunday, in a TV interview, Harriet Harman remarks that "a lot of people don't actually know who the leader of the opposition is." The same day, Jack Straw writes that Miliband's task "is to allow the real Ed to escape from behind the rather abstract language he sometimes uses." He goes on to mention that dread term "pre-distribution." The outlook is, at first, unpromising. It is raining, transparent umbrellas bobbing along the streets like an ominous fluther of jellyfish. Inside the main hall the climbing wall is empty, the fudge stand fudgeless, and tired delegates are stripping off suit jackets for a pummelling at the 10-minute massage stall. I watch one lean forward, lanyard swinging, as a masseur's elbow disappears into his shoulders. Kelly Bramall, massage therapist, says these clients are much more stressed than the ones she sees at festival gigs. She can feel the deep knots in their neck muscles. I'm looking for vim and vigour, but at Tweet That! the mood is surprisingly downbeat, the average age in the youth zone, I would estimate generously, to be 45. A delegate, speaking from the floor, remarks flatly: "The key for politicians at all levels is to appear human, because we all know they're actually not." I chase after the Labour students, in their bright pink T-shirts, hoping for some youthful "we're going to win this" attitude from a team down but not quite out. None of them will speak. They would have to get it signed off, they say, before passing me on to student officers, who pass me on to other student officers. The general mood is quiet, tight-lipped. It might be the silence of people who are scared to say the wrong thing, or scared that if they open their mouth they might begin crying. The people on the Socialist societies stand are thankfully more friendly, and the T-shirt they are selling, with that long-standing LGBT Labour slogan - Never Kissed a Tory - offers a hint of irreverence. Jamie Hodge, events and fundraising officer for LGBT Labour, has been careening around the conference hall, asking shadow ministers to pose with a sign saying: "Labour 4 Equal Marriage." He scrolls through the smiling pictures on his camera. Ed Miliband. Ed Balls. David Miliband. I've got everyone. He arrives at a picture of Stephen Twigg, shadow education secretary, "throwing some shapes on the dancefloor" at the LGBT party that kicked off the conference. "We had about 500 people dancing to Gaga," he says. Which songs? God, every single one. Martin Whelton, from the Labour party Irish Society, says he's finding conference invigorating, and thought Balls's speech was excellent. There are a lot of upbeat noises about Balls's affordable-housing pledge. "I believe passionately that Ed Miliband will be the prime minister," he says, like a true believer, before describing his mood as quietly confident. An old friend of mine, a long-time Labour councillor, says that there is no unrealistic optimism at the moment. If I have picked up on a depressed air, he continues, it is because conference is something like "group therapy" for a lot of councillors this year, at a time when their work involves such unappealing decisions as whether to cut youth services, social care or libraries. The feeling of diminishing returns is everywhere. A box invites delegates to vote on whether Ed Miliband should stay or go as leader. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for The Guardian Never more so than on Tuesday morning, when a new poll hits. The ComRes survey for the Independent shows that just 22% of people think Ed Miliband would make a good prime minister; and only 24% trust him and Ed Balls on the economy. On the way to the conference hall, I ask the people of Manchester what they think of Miliband. The woman behind the till in Sainsbury's says she doesn't really think he's prime minister material, she's not impressed by the way he talks - although as a long-time Labour voter she will probably give him a chance. Jacqueline, a charity worker, out on a cigarette break, looks nonplussed when I mention his name. I repeat it. She blinks back. I explain that he is the Labour leader and she says it's funny, because, again, she's a long-time Labour voter. A streetcleaner shrugs his confusion. Outside the conference centre, alongside the Remploy campaigners waving signs that say "Maria Miller Factory Killer," a man dressed as a bee suspects Miliband is not "charismatic enough" to win over the electorate. The moment of truth is soon to arrive, and there's more of a buzz in the hall. Tessa Jowell is giving her Olympics and Paralympics speech in the main auditorium, and while there is a moment early on when she loses me (she mentions that not a single construction worker died in the building of the Olympic stadium, a prospect that I had never previously considered and which sends me into a long spiral of retrospective fretting), the mood in the half-full hall is fairly good. The Olympics footage is genuinely moving, the mass Mobot is fleeting but enthusiastic, and the torchbearers, gamesmakers and Olympians, who include Nicola Adams, are greeted with huge warmth because, well, everyone loves Nicola Adams. The anticipation rises as Miliband's speech approaches. As people file into the hall, there is an excited murmur, which continues through the slightly unconvincing film, painting him as just another ordinary comprehensive lad. Then it is on to his first appearance on stage. There is a standing ovation, which he greets with a goofy smile. His decision to deliver the speech without notes is clearly popular, and as he talks, more and more lines land strongly. There is mass appreciation for the comment: "David Cameron isn't just writing the cheques. He is receiving one. Also for the line: "Have you ever seen a more incompetent, hopeless, out of touch, U-turning, pledge-breaking, make-it-up-as-you-go-along, back-of-the-envelope, miserable shower than this prime minister and this government?" And he gets into some snappy call-and-response action as he talks about Cameron's reorganisation of the NHS. The GPs said no. "No!" shout the delegates. The nurses said no. "No!" they shout again. "You just can't trust the Tories on the national health service," prompts another standing ovation. The anti-Tory lines play exceptionally strongly, but so too do some others about his background and beliefs, and on the way out of the auditorium, the burbled reactions are overwhelmingly positive. "He must have a very good memory, and what a lovely, clear voice..""Knowing him, he'll be worried people will think he's a rightwinger, but he shouldn't." A very, very clear message. My councillor friend texts one word: "Awesome." I speak to Beth Miller, 20, and George Lindars-Hammond, 21. Both attend Sheffield University, and Lindars-Hammond is a Labour councillor. "I just want to go out and make Ed Miliband prime minister now," he says. I did before, but I really do now. Ben Lucas, a 17-year-old delegate from Macclesfield, says it was "good to hear about Ed's past. I think the British people don't really know much about him, so obviously if he's going to become prime minister people need to find out more. I ask Harman whether Miliband passed the test of showing off his true self, helping the country get to know him as a person, and she says, predictably but apparently ingenuously, he did. He talked very personally about his family, his school life - this is who I am, what I believe in - and I think it was very compelling. On the steps outside the hall, councillors are milling excitedly. Ed Turner, deputy leader of Oxford city council, was pleased Miliband spoke up for disabled people, and for those out of work. Tony Newman, leader of the Labour group in Croydon, believes he connected with the public at a time when "politics is getting very, very real, because it's affecting far more people." And I catch up with Jamie Hodge, still running around the conference centre, accosting MPs with his "Labour 4 Equal Marriage" sign. "Bullshit aside, I thought that was brilliant," he says. Let's be honest, I think one speech is not going to make a leader, or a man, or a prime minister, and there's three years to go until an election. But from my point of view, and for Labour party members, I think everyone was very pleased with that. As I leave Manchester, the rain is still sheeting, but a very palpable cloud has lifted.