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Labour cheered but not renewed
Daniel Forman
As he said in his typically intelligent address today, John Reid rightly wants to re-engage with the Muslim community.
But Labour's problem was also typified by the home secretary's speech. The party is not short of talent, but trust.
Yet, mostly because of Iraq and his relationship with the White House, the government will not win back Muslim support while Tony Blair remains its leader.
Brilliant at couching his agenda in the language of the labour movement, Reid was also cryptically clever in his talk of the Labour leadership issue.
Ostensibly concentrating on policy, he also joked about standing and offered a broad vision that could have been prime ministerial. Intriguingly Blair watched him from the platform, an honour he had otherwise conferred only on Gordon Brown and Bill Clinton.
John Prescott also breached the cabinet's 'don't mention the leadership' rule. In equally typical ebullient style he thumped the tub and sent the delegates home happy for the final time.
Confirming his own departure can only have limited rather than caused damage. And while some still hoping to challenge the chancellor will have been disappointed by his decision to endorse Brown, neither was it a great surprise.
The speeches capped a largely successful conference for the party in which it avoided a repeat of the rows of early September and began to discuss its future agenda in a meaningful way.
As Anatole Kaletsky points out in the Times today, if the biggest Blair/Brown split story the press could find was between Cherie and the chancellor rather than Tony, things can't be that bad.
Labour ends the month in, in many ways, a better position than it began it, with genuine clarity now on the prime minister and his deputy's intentions, without Blair yet looking like a lame duck.
However its poll position remains bad and whatever bounce the Brown/Blair/Bill show provides, it is likely to be eclipsed by David Cameron's turn in the spotlight in Bournemouth next week.
The farewell party went well, but renewal can't really start until a new prime minister is in place.
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Published: Thu, 28 Sep 2006 13:12:32 GMT+01
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