TUESDAY'S speech was a bravura performance by Gordon Brown. He knew he had to give a good account of himself or the vultures that were circling the Manchester conference would swoop upon his faltering hulk.
Now they must be content to wait, perched on the buttresses and gargoyles of Westminster Palace, but wait they shall, for there is still the smell of death about the Labour Party.
Brown's best two lines were to say that the job of prime minister i
s not for a novice – a swing at both David Miliband and David Cameron, whom he would like to suggest are jib-jabbing flyweights against his clunking fist – and that he had repaired the roof while the sun was shining, a reply to the Tory accusation that he has squandered billions of public money in the good times when he should have been preparing us for the bad.
But it is Boom and Bust Brown who is looking like the novice. In his first year as Prime Minister we have seen house values drop for the first time since the UK record began, inflation grow to a sixteen-year high, mortgage approvals drop by more than a third, and public debt reach record levels. What's more, unemployment is expected to reach between two and four million, and a recent opinion poll shows Labour now faces its biggest election defeat since 1935.
When it's his turn to speak next week, if Cameron doesn't point all this out and show that Brown has been unable to do his new job despite years of training, then he's not the title contender he claims.
He should also remind everyone that when Boom and Bust Brown became Chancellor, the house he moved into was a des res, not some dilapidated ruin. The economy had already been growing for six straight years, unemployment was falling, inflation was under control, taxes had been cut, and borrowing was being reduced. It was a golden legacy to grow on, not the black hole of public debt and economic carnage he has created.
The public paid all Brown's extra taxes and expected him to at least improve public services in return. So the public blames the Prime Minister's problems on his former Chancellor – unfortunately for Boom and Bust Brown they are one and the same person.
Now, no Labour seat appears safe and the forthcoming Glenrothes by-election – an area already lost to the SNP in the Holyrood elections – haunts the party like Banquo's ghost.
Next week, David Cameron has a superb chance to land a knockout punch. He can, and should, tell the British public what he would do in Brown's place. He should explain the enormity of the task and how the first three, maybe four, years are going to be tough, very tough, before it gets better.
He should take the gloves off and show that as roof repairers go, he's no apprentice.
Suited and bootedI was struck by the number of suits being worn at the Labour conference – and that was just the women. I was also struck by the air of depression and sombre mood that was about – and that was just the smokers. To smoke anywhere in public is now so-o-o last year, but to smoke at a Labour conference is to be George Bush riding bareback through the streets of Tehran.
The happiest people about were undoubtedly Manchester City supporters who were whistling and kicking their heels in the air as they walked down the street after a 6-0 thrashing of Portsmouth. The vast fortune of a new Arab owner promise a bright future even for local Labour MPs with marginal seats.
Resort to change
Attending Labour and Tory conferences is no longer like staying at two contrasting hotels.
The Tories are like a grand old five-star railway hotel that saw better times in the fifties, and again in the eighties after a refurb by a new manager that made it the place to stay once again.
After falling from popularity the mausoleum has since had a lick of paint, in trendy colours, but it may yet peel off under the heat of public scrutiny – especially as the new manager has never run so much as a whelk stall and the head chef doesn't know his sirloin from his rump.
Labour is like a Butlin's holiday camp with happy redcoats making British summers bearable, until the incessant strikes of the seventies saw the camp closed down for nearly twenty years.
Reopened under a new owner– restored, renamed and repackaged – it enjoyed a revival, but it's a people business and getting the right staff has proved impossible. Plans are afoot to turn the camp into a call centre or a transit camp for illegal immigrants after 2010.
Both resorts need to find their true purpose, to appeal to their own markets. Trying to offer something for everyone will only end in tears.
The full article contains 830 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
