On Saturday delegates began to arrive at the Labour Party conference in Manchester. The police erected their security barriers, the lobbyists stocked their tables with leaflets. Today the delegates will catch their trains, the barriers will come down, the tables will be stacked away. And between these two events? Nothing happened.

Gordon Brown was not ousted, but nor did he secure his leadership. The plotters did not strike, but nor did they give up plotting. If anything, the gulf between the public pose of the party and the private intrigue widened. On the platform, the party boasted of unity, but, in private, one minister after another made clear that the Cabinet has lost confidence in the Prime Minister. Mr Brown’s speech may fleetingly lift spirits, but it has failed to raise his prospects. Labour knows that its leader is failing the party and is minded to replace him before the next election. The party leaves Manchester in the grip of the same three questions with which it arrived: How? When? Who?

Conferences can provide moments of drama that light up the political sky, even ones that change the national argument. The moment when Hugh Gaitskell promised to fight, fight and fight again to save the party he loved; the moment Harold Wilson promised to forge a new Britain in the white heat of technology; the moment Neil Kinnock attacked his own councillors for scurrying around in taxis handing out redundancy notices to their own workers. In Manchester, David Miliband had his photograph taken with a banana.

It is not as if there was nothing to discuss. You might have thought that a political party lagging by more than 15 points or a financial system teetering on the brink might have provided a setting for something memorable. But no.

For this was the conference of a tired party, exhausted both intellectually and emotionally.

In the bars and parties, the talk was solely of coups and rebellions.

Some offered the summer scenario: Mr Brown will be forced out after the local and European elections on June 9 next year, when Labour is likely to be wiped out at the polls. Others suggested an autumn assassination: there are some Cabinet ministers who want to act sooner rather than later and are considering whether to resign in order to trigger a leadership challenge before Christmas. In the hall, by contrast, all was serene. Speakers stepped up, words came out but nothing happened. “Words are deeds,” said Wittgenstein. Not in Manchester they weren’t.

The Prime Minister’s main address was better than his effort last year. It contained a few passages that made real arguments. It was authentic and it went after the Conservatives, skewering their idea that the country is broken. The line that “everyone knows that I am all in favour of apprenticeships but let me tell you that this is no time for a novice” was clever, serving as a witty gibe at his Foreign Secretary while aimed at the Tory leader. The whole thing wasn’t JFK perhaps, but it wasn’t IDS either.

Yet by this morning, what remains of the Prime Minister’s speech? It was briefed to the media after breakfast, delivered to the audience after lunch and forgotten about by everyone after dinner. There was no great new vision, no compelling new argument and no arresting policy offer. Nor was there any recognition of voter concerns — there were three pages on the NHS but less than half a page on crime. Anyone who did not intend to vote Labour when Mr Brown started would not have been convinced to do so by anything he said.

“Winning the fight for Britain’s future” ran the banner behind the podium. It has never been more obvious than it was this week that the intention is to win the fight for Brown, not for Britain. At one point near the end of his speech, Mr Brown announced that it “is not about me, it’s about you”. It was the best joke he delivered. Of course it was about him.

And so the delegates leave Manchester no wiser than when they arrived. Nobody has risen. Nobody has fallen. Nobody has offered an idea of the future. Mr Brown has failed to offer a vision for the country. His rivals have failed to offer an alternative to his leadership. In fact, delegates could have been forgiven for retiring early to their hotels. They would have learnt more about the future from the film of the month on offer in their bedrooms: There Will Be Blood.