Blair the healer says farewell

And so it is done. Tony Blair has made his last party conference speech as Labour leader and Prime Minister, and British politics will never be quite the same again.

Watching the speech via the BBC website rather than live in the conference hall as of old, it was clear to me that he has his eyes on one last great historical achievement before he hands over, working to resolve the Middle East conflict that is the fulcrum of so many of the world's problems.

"I will dedicate myself with the same commitment I have given in Northern Ireland to advancing peace between Israel and Palestine," he said.

If he can achieve that, I will gladly take back everything I have ever said about him.

But Mr Blair also made clear his intention to try to heal the wounds closer to home, pledging to work to unify the party in pursuit of "the only legacy that matters" - a fourth-term general election win.

And in that context, though they stopped short of an endorsement, his words about Gordon Brown this afternoon must surely be seen as an attempt to end the "deep fissure" in the New Labour family about which Peter Mandelson spoke this morning.

Mandelson's words seemed to me to signal a rapprochement and Blair's tribute to Brown's "remarkable service to the country" has underlined that.

Are the Blairites finally getting the message that by attacking Gordon, they only help David Cameron's Tories in the longer-run? Let's hope so.

Either way, this speech surely laid to rest any scurrillous suggestions that Blair sees Cameron as his real political heir, and is content to adopt an "apres moi le deluge" approach to the Labour Party.

The attacks on Cameron were the most convincing - and most loudly applauded - bits of the speech, mocking his foreign policy for simultaneously flirting with both anti-Americanism and Euro-scepticism.

"If we can't take this lot apart in the next few years, we shouldn't be in the business of politics at all," he said.

I may hate the bugger for what he did in Iraq, for what his henchmen did to David Kelly, and for all the years of media-manipulation and spin. But you can't help but admire a winner.

Memories of Tony

As any regular reader of this blog, or for that matter any of my newspaper columns will know, I have not always been very complimentary about Tony Blair. There is something about his showmanship and shallow ideological roots that repels me and in that respect, I suppose I have always been a natural Brownite, yearning for a return to the more substantial, less image-based style of politics that prevailed during my formative years.

But it is that very showmanship and ability to make others hear what they want to hear that makes him a master of the setpiece party conference address, and I confess that there have been times when even a sceptic like me has been held spellbound by them.

I heard my first live Blair conference address in 1995, shortly after joining the Lobby. This was the year of his "Britain as a young country" speech, with Blair successfully projecting himself as the young moderniser who could give Britain a fresh start after the sleaze and division of the Major years.

Each of his subsequent speeches was distinguished by a memorable catchphrase, from "A beacon to the world " (1997), to "The giving age" (1998), "The forces of conservatism" (1999), "My irreducible core" (2000) and so on up to "No reverse gear" (2004) and last year's "We are the changemakers."

Without a doubt, though, the best and in retrospect most poignant was his 2001 "New world order" speech made in the aftermath of 9/11, in which he set out his vision not just of a better Britain, but a better world.

It was much caricatured. Matthew Parris memorably wrote at the time that he "left the runway on a limited strike to remove one individual from a hillside in Afghanistan, then veered off on a neo-imperial mission to save the entire planet."

True, but there undoubtedly was a feeling in the days immediately after 9/11 that, as Blair put it in that speech, "out of the shadow of this evil should emerge lasting good."

"This is a moment to seize," he said. "The kaleidoscope has been shaken, the pieces are in flux, soon they will settle again. Before they do let us reorder this world around us and use modern science to provide prosperity for all. Science can't make that choice for us, only the moral power of a world acting as a community can."

He was right, but sadly, he couldn't be as good as his words, and that phrase "The moral power of a world acting as a community" sounds unbearably hollow in the light of the unilateral invasion of Iraq which shattered not just that world community but the whole concept of international co-operation.

Today Mr Blair makes his 13th and final speech. But whatever memorable phrases he comes up with, it won't change the fact that his premiership has been a missed opportunity, both at home and abroad.

Update: More great party conference memories, including Iain Duncan Smith turning up the volume, David Steel telling the Liberals to prepare for government, and Denis Healey defying the old left, can be viewed HERE.

Gordon shows why he's the man

As the previous post makes clear, it's not my opinion that counts. Gordon Brown's campaign for the leadership of the Labour Party will stand or fall on the extent to which he can win over those people who are NOT his natural supporters.

But for what it's worth, the Chancellor's brilliant party conference speech today demonstrated to me exactly why I believe he is the man to run Britain.

It wasn't so much the stuff about social justice, constitutional reform, the "empowerment agenda," the "good society" and rebalancing the honours system - although I warmly welcome everything he said about those things.

No, it was because Brown tackled head-on the idea that political style is somehow more important than political substance - encapsulated in his phrase: "I am more interested in the future of the Arctic Circle (pictured) than the future of the Arctic Monkeys."

"If I thought the future of politics was about celebrity, I wouldn't be in politics. Some see politics as spectacle. I see politics as service," he said.

The significance of this lies in the context in which it was said - a concerted attempt by the Blairites to hang Brown out to dry by calling his "image" into question, knowing they cannot get him on his record.

The reason I hope they fail is not necessarily because I disagree with them politically - many of Alan Milburn's ideas about the "new localism" are brilliant, for example - but because I think they are cheapening politics.

Brown closed his speech by saying he would "relish" the chance to take on David Cameron, the apotheosis of style over substance. Today's speech showed why he should get it.