Europe’s dwindling band of centre-left prime ministers put on a defiant show at the UK Labour party conference on Monday, refusing to be cowed by a “bad” German election result.

On the stage before Labour delegates in Brighton stood three of an increasingly endangered species of left-leaning statesmen: Gordon Brown of the UK, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, prime minister of Spain and Norway’s Jens Stoltenberg.