So the next general election is Labour’s to lose? It could be said the party has been going about that with unmitigated proficiency. Truth is, Labour has a mountain to climb before it gets into power, and then the hard work really starts.

Contemplation of the challenges facing an in-coming Corbyn government might in the current climate seem a fanciful indulgence. Yet in spite of the party forming itself into a circular firing squad in front of an open electoral goal, the possibility of power remains real. The Tories certainly think so.

‘Stop Corbyn!’ is perhaps the only uniting rallying call in a Conservative Party under a tired and exhausted government, with a prime minister under siege from within and without.

But even as the government proves itself unfit to rule and on the verge of a split over Europe, Labour appears to be in even greater danger of self-immolation. The prospect is promulgated by a mainstream media salivating at the opportunity provided by the ‘anti-Semitism crisis’, as well as Labour’s lack of clarity over Brexit.

Yet Labour has belatedly nudged ahead in the polls and requires a swing of just 1.6 percent to become the largest party, a more testing 5 percent to take an overall majority.

Corbyn has fought a hostile press campaign to portray him and all that he stands for as a pestilential threat to civilised life in Britain. The forward challenge also comes critically from within a civil service dedicated to serving any elected government but whose structure and culture has for decades been devoted to deregulation, outsourcing, and austerity.

An incoming Labour administration would be confronted by a local government system — on which so much of the social fabric depends — which has been hollowed out by cuts and a National Health Service in urgent need of reform, debilitated by creeping privatisation.

It is difficult to plan for where the country might stand in the unfathomable mess bequeathed by Theresa May over Brexit. But it is imperative to do so. Much of what Labour currently promises would still be effectively illegal under European Union rules.

For now, we must assume that an increasingly desperate Tory party will not find the legislative time to resurrect the ‘dead-in-the-water’ boundary changes sitting on a Whitehall shelf which would abolish fifty parliamentary seats and leave Labour needing almost seventy Westminster gains rather than the current estimate of thirty-four to achieve a majority.

Under these circumstances an incoming government will clearly face huge problems. As a draft Queen’s Speech of more than thirty bills, the central task will be to end austerity and to give people an income increase while refinancing the public services. Preparedness for self-fulfilling-prophecy headlines about a ‘run on the pound’ is prudent, not defeatist.

The task, therefore, is twofold: to get into power in the first place, and to stay there long enough to break with free-market orthodoxy with a new, expanded role for the state and its relationship with communities. (Threefold if Labour emerges as the largest party but without an overall majority, which is a different but not altogether unlikely outcome.)

And here lies the rub. Corbyn’s opponents, inside and outside his party, are united against this shift towards municipal public ownership and a society governed by a bottom-up democracy. The democratic ramifications are just too unpalatable for them.

Millions of voters, younger ones especially, have been persuaded to back Labour on the promise of radical change. Corbyn and those members and trade unions campaigning on the ground throughout the country already will have to inject some honesty into their message as to what it will be possible to achieve in the early weeks and months of potentially massive turbulence.

So it’s going to be tough enough without the scale of division witnessed in the run-up to the Liverpool conference. Regressives within Labour, who cannot grasp or stubbornly oppose the necessary paradigm shift, are continuing the party’s decades-old war against the Left, climbing onto any diversionary cause which might inflict damage on Corbyn.

It is an indulgence Labour cannot afford, but seemingly cannot avoid. It is a rejection not just of Corbyn but of Labour, the country and generations to come who need a society based on common wealth rather than greed.

It would be a tragedy if the biggest challenge to a Labour victory came from within Labour itself.