Has their party conference in Liverpool turned things around after a difficult start for Labour?

This was the party conference that couldn't look too much like a party.

Delegates arriving in Liverpool for Labour's annual gathering were celebrating a massive election win - and their first time in power in 14 years - but the backdrop to this conference was a cost of living crisis, a high-profile cut to winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners, and a very recent row over expensive freebies accepted by the Prime Minister.

Put simply - too much champagne and cheering could have looked in poor taste.

And as the storm clouds gathered over the conference hall (provided a rather on the nose political metaphor that journalists have been exploiting all week...) the atmosphere Labour frontbenchers seemed keen to project inside was of quiet competence instead of giddiness - serious politics for serious times.

"It's a tough job, we're not really coming in saying 'whoopie-woo we won the election' - we have got a lot of work on our hands" admits Lucy Powell, the Leader of the House of Commons.

The MP, who represents Manchester Central, is parliament's representative in Cabinet, and part of her role is about restoring trust and integrity in politics. But she's optimistic about the future, and denies that her boss has made that work a bit harder amid the freebie row

"Trust in politics for many years now has been at an all-time-low, that's something we are really alive to. And the first thing that people want to see from the Labour party is that we really can change people's lives. Does politics really matter? Can it actually change people's lives? We've been given a chance now to prove that it does"

The budget was a heavy presence in the conference hall - we know its coming, we know its going to be "painful". But speaking to many of the North West's MPs, inboxes full of emails from worried constituents, they tell me that what was needed here was a decent serving of optimism and hope.

It was the task of the deputy Prime Minister, and MP for Ashton-under-Lyne, to set the tone of the conference, injecting what one MP said was such "much needed optimism".

"Look, I get it", Angela Rayner said in her conference speech, "Balancing my own department’s budgets brought me back to the old days when I had 60 quid to get me and my son through the week. I know more than most that every pound counts.

"So let me be blunt. We can’t wish our problems away. We have to face them. That's the difference between opposition and government. But Conference things can get better, if we make the right choices... And we are fixing the foundations to put Britain back on the path to growth."

And that line of hard stuff now for hopeful stuff later was littered throughout the Prime Minister's keynote speech.

"This is a long-term project. I never said otherwise, not even in the campaign" the PM told an increasinfgly cheerful crowd, "But Conference, make no mistake, the work of change has begun. The patient, calm, determined era of politics as service has begun."

It wasn't a speech heavy with splashy announcements - there isn't the money for those - though there was a promise to make sure the long-awaited Hillsborough Law will be in place before April 2025, and a pledge for homes for veterans with housing needs.

But was that enough to win over some of the North West's new MPs?

"There is hope, there is room for optimism and reason to be excited" says Kirith Entwistle, who won the Bolton North East seat from the Tories back in July.

"Everyone here shares the sentiment that people are fundamentally better off under a Labour government - and I think that's a really exciting prospect in itself "

Other new MPs sitting in seats so recently clutched in Conservative hands shared the hope - but there's also a steely determination at play here. They know their party will have to deliver some concrete benefits to people's lives if their political monopoly in the North West stands a chance of surviving beyond one electoral term.

So once again it's all eyes on the Budget. Sir Keir Starmer has walked a long road to power - now begins his five year fight to keep it.