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Of all the Labour conferences I've been to, this has been the first which can lay claim to that precious commodity: optimism.

The Corbyn faithful are in no doubt that they're heading for government.

Of course, there is small the matter of another election first, whenever it comes. And to get Mr Corbyn into Downing Street, they'll need to win seats such as East Worthing and Shoreham.

It's never been Labour before, but in June sliced a Conservative majority down from 15,000 to 5,000.

So if the SNP cling on in Scotland, Mr Corbyn needs to do even better in England than Tony Blair did, thus winning seats like this.

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The Labour leader gained seats in June by motivating a new coalition of the young, graduates and non-voters. The question is this: is that coalition maxed out?

How many more votes from those sort of people can be mined? If the answer is not many, then we'll have reached peak Corbyn and the 2017 conference won't be remembered as the beginning of something but the end.

That's unless he can expand the party's appeal into older seats with fewer graduates, like Worthing.

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This task might be steeper than the confident activists might yet realise.

It was very telling, spending time talking to voters there on Wednesday afternoon and showing them key bits of the leader's conference speech, just how divided by age the voters of this town are.

Some older voters are staunchly resistant to some his key policies.

One pensioner told me: "He's at the music festivals trying to ingratiate himself to the young. What about the old? He makes a claim to let them off on their student debt. The minute he's asked how to pay, he backs down.

"He's untrustworthy - as are many politicians."

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Another agreed: "I remember all the nationalisation before. What good did it do us? The young just don't remember. And where is all the money going to come from anyway? He's like Father Christmas."

Another older lady put it more bluntly: "I think he's a communist."

By contrast, the young were much keener. As a young lady summed it up: "He's got our back in a way no other politician has."

And maybe that's Corbyn's problem. People say he has to reach out to the old. But the very things which excite Labour's young new coalition - more spending, tuition fees, a more interventionist state - are those which conjure the memories of the bad old days of Labour's past for the old.

That square might yet prove impossible to circle.