LORD MANDELSON set the scene at Brighton's Labour conference with an untypically stirring, well-received speech on Monday. The election is still "up for grabs", insisted the man who is now effectively the UK's deputy prime minister and for whom playing the role of Lazarus has become a way of life. Yet there was still a quality of "Nearer my God to Thee" on the deck of the Titanic. The challenge is mountainous. The latest poll yesterday placed Labour in third place for the first time since 1982 – Ipsos Mori put the Tories on 36 per cent, the Liberal Democrats, on 25, and Labour, on 24.
Yesterday came the main act, Gordon Brown, who will certainly now, despite earlier wobbles, lead his party into an election before next June. His last speech to a Labour conference ahead of the poll was about preparing the field of battle. His message was threefold: showing the voters that a tired and what many see as complacent party that has governed since 1997 still has a vision to bring Britain forward and a feel for Middle Britain; that the alternative is far worse, an unreformed ideologically driven Tory party still wedded to the 1980s which consistently, when faced with a choice, makes the wrong one; and an exhortation to the party to “think big and then fight hard” a winnable battle.
Brown’s message was that Labour is the party of the centre ground, of what he called again and again the “hardworking majority”, its values of self-reliance, thrift and a society “where we care for each other” – “call them ‘middle class values’ or ‘traditional working class values’ ”. Breaking new ground, he spoke of the need to tackle both anti-social behaviour with curbs on binge drinking and enforcement of asbos against parents as well as their wayward children, and to deal with teenage pregnancies by putting unmarried 16-year-old mothers and their children into supervised homes.
He embraced electoral reform as a response to the political expenses scandal, with a pledge to advance the cause of the semi-proportional “alternative vote” system in the election manifesto – not, please note, beforehand – and of the right of recall of MPs, though its means unspecified. And there were a host of specific commitments on training, education and health, notably new targets on cancer testing – no doubt an attempt to force Tory leader David Cameron to move beyond generalisations at his party conference next week.
It was a well-crafted and impassioned performance overall but not one that will set Britain alight. Or, probably, win him an election.