There seems to be three ways to get a round of applause at the podium of the Labour Party conference these days. Shout out ‘savage Tory cuts’, say ‘You can’t trust the Tories on the NHS’ or mock the only leader to win general elections for the party in nearly 50 years.

The overwhelming feeling I’ve had from this year’s Labour conference is one of pretence. Fakery.

I’ve heard the phrase ‘Tory cuts’ on the telly so much that the words have become meaningless and the applause in the hall fades a little more each time it’s used. The anger isn’t raw, it’s synthetic, political.

Ed Miliband wants the public to see both Labour and himself as outsiders. Insurgents against vested interests, as if the last 13 years of Labour government, the cosying up to the Murdoch press, the vested interests of the unions and the public sector and Milibands' journey from Oxford to Harvard to spad to MP, to minister and finally Labour leader didn’t exist.

As the conference closed yesterday a woman in a red dress sang ‘the people’s flag’ against the backdrop of a blue stage. Slight tuning issues abounded. Miliband has moved his party left towards what he thinks is the centre ground and Ed Balls ‘apologised’.

What they oppose on policy seems equally fake. Harman railed against electoral registration rules the party once proposed. John Healey pledged that he would ensure NHS hospitals remain in public sector hands, completely forgetting his party set up foundation hospitals and Private Finance Initiatives -  and Ed Balls tried to pretend that we could pay down the deficit if only we spent a bit more and taxed a bit less, as if there wasn’t a sovereign debt crisis whirling all around us in Europe and America’s failure to tackle its debt mountain hadn’t lost it its AAA credit rating.

Maybe it’s because Labour doesn’t know what it stands for anymore? With the absence of the clear dogma of New Labour, loathe it or love it, the party is hanging on to opportunism and opposition for opposition's sake, setting up straw men, like ‘predator’ and ‘producer’ business and using wrecking balls like Sir John Rose to knock them down.

Perhaps it's amateur hour? Sir John Rose moved from the ‘good capitalism’ of producing cars at Rolls Royce, to the ‘bad capitalism’ of being a predator Rothschild banker last week. Attacking job creators isn’t good politics and when Sadiq Khan and Andy Burnham failed to answer Andrew Neil on what a bad company is, no answer was forthcoming. It was nothing more than damaging phony rhetoric.

The case in point was Rory Weal. The sixteen year old stole the show by portraying himself as the disadvantaged teenager, dependent on the welfare state, railing against an attempt to destroy the safety net by the ‘savage’ Tory government. Except Rory isn’t exactly from a disadvantaged background. He's the son of a millionaire property developer and privately educated.

I would never try to discourage a young person from getting involved in politics and speaking up for what they believe but you have to be genuine when you do. His airbrushing of his background to fit a narrative is the personification of a party trying too hard to prove to the public it is something it is not.

That’s the problem with Labour these days. They talk a good talk, but scratch below the calm exterior and you find a party spinning furiously – I’m concerned they are beginning to believe their own grand delusion.

Tags: Ed Miliband, John healey, Labour Conference 2011, Rory Weal, Sir John Rose