JEREMY CORBYN left no doubts in his conference speech that his leadership of the Labour Party will be markedly different from those who have gone before.

Corbyn wants a more rational approach to political life in general, reiterating his opposition to personal abuse, cyberbullying and misogynistic jibes and affirming his goal of a kinder, more caring society.

The Labour leader dispensed with some of the more irritating campaign imports from the US, such as requiring his partner to join him on stage to gaze adoringly during the post-speech applause.

It had been suggested that the now apparently mandatory blasting out of a pop song at the end of his delivery would also be ditched.

It wasn’t, but, if there has to be a “relevant” tune played, Working on a Building of Love by Chairmen of the Board certainly epitomised Corbyn’s address.

He might have feared coming over as an old hippy by emphasising the love theme, but the new leader knew what he was doing.

His consistent appeals for decency, solidarity, kindness, caring — love for short — stood in contrast to the hard-faced selfishness epitomised by Tory Party leaders mollycoddled by inherited wealth and finance-sector backers.

Eschewing personalised abuse does not mean blunting the class edge of Corbyn’s politics.

His revelation that David Cameron’s “pre-paid government” received £55 million in funding from hedge funds and reciprocated with £145m in tax breaks for these sharks speaks volumes.

Similarly, his demand that Cameron abandon his sycophantic attitude to the medieval dictatorship in Saudi Arabia and urge a reprieve for Ali Mohammed al-Nimr who has been sentenced to beheading and crucifixion for taking part in a street demonstration exposes the hollowness of Tory claims to be concerned with human rights.

Corbyn’s insistence that the government take action in light of the Redcar closure threat to defend Britain’s steel industry, as Italy has done, puts to shame the Tories’ claim to be the party of working people.

Labour’s leader made a virtue of having a shadow cabinet whose members disagree publicly with him on several issues, stressing his willingness to listen to everyone.

However, he stressed that the scale of his leadership election victory provides a “mandate for change,” reaffirming his own opposition to Britain wasting £100bn on a nuclear weapons programme.

Corbyn understood better than many of his supporters — some of whom drew up potential expulsion lists and believed the new leader could impose his preferred policies — that his election was simply the first step.

Revolutionary change is a protracted process not the business of a one-off event.

His project — and that of his supporters and newly enrolled membership — is to reintroduce democracy into a party that was centralised and disdained by the new Labour grouping.

Corbyn’s declaration that policies would not be imposed by him, the shadow cabinet or the Parliamentary Labour Party but would be decided by the membership was crucial.

This means that, as he himself stressed, Labour is now an anti-austerity party. It is also committed to a major government-funded council housebuilding programme and to public ownership of our railways.

There is some way to go and there is still a small minority of once-important people within the party who yearn for bad news on which to demand his removal as leader.

However enthusiasm is infectious and most of those in the party who didn’t back him will swallow their disappointment and differences and get behind Corbyn in the vital struggle to defeat the Tories.