Labour Conference: Brighton sketch: Instant karma as delegates embrace spirit of new age

Welcome to the first Zen party conference in Britain. In the corridors and hotels, the delegates do not shout, or weep - or even talk very loudly. There is no factionalism to speak of, and hard leftists do not hand out leaflets with trenchant headlines about treachery and bloodshed. Nor is the tone triumphalist; the conference held a restrained and self-contained 10-minute gloat half way through yesterday morning - a sort of smiley reverse of the one minute silence, and then went back to its serene discussion about this or that.

This reticence does not appear to be due to great nervousness or trepidation about the chances of their new government messing it all up.

Hard-bitten Scots ministers drink Coca-Cola in the lunch-time bars - and speak in gentle, confident conversational tones about defence or Northern Ireland, or whatever their brief is. In the chamber, jokes are laughed at, but without the desperate, partisan hilarity that usually marks what passes for humour in politics. Standing ovations are not given, because they would disrupt the satisfied equilibrium of the occasion.

Frankly, Buddhist monks in conclave probably generate more heat than there is here; the Dalai Lama is elected in conditions of greater disputatiousness than is the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party.

If it goes on like this, there will be no journalists in Brighton at all by the end of the week. It is as though the Natural Law Party had won the last election.

Last night a group of therapists - headed by Susie Orbach - held a fringe meeting on "putting emotions to work". Promising, among other things, to "map the emotional consequences of the new work ecology", Antidote (as the group is known) has been campaigning for greater emotional literacy in politics.

But could it be that Ms Orbach's visit was unnecessary, and that new Labour has already got the message? Have they all been reading the I-Tone, in which balance is to be achieved between the Ying of Mo and the Yang of John? Certainly all eyes this morning were on the beloved teacher, sitting inscrutably on the platform, a small smile on his lips and his eyes displaying a marked slant. Unseen, his legs were probably in the lotus position.

Even the set has been constructed on some sort of Feng Shui principle. From above, it is shaped like a large comma, the round bit containing the podium, and the semi-circular tail seating the chairperson and assorted dignitaries.

A comma, of course, as the designers will have known, is a pause for breath - a moment of reflection or rest, in a busy sentence. The coloured slabs behind the stage too - in orange, green, blue and purple - suggest harmony and happiness. So the chi passes down the hall slowly and uninterrupted.

And who is to argue with the tranquil satisfaction of delegates here? Wise ones teach that we must travel great journeys and endure harsh trials to achieve inner peace, Grasshopper. Everybody here is in at least their fourth or fifth reincarnation. In their first lives they were woodlice, followed by mangy fruitbats, slaves of the brutal Assyrian Empire, and then - most humiliating by far - they returned as members of Old, perpetually unsuccessful, Labour.

Little wonder that they contemplate their current existences with mingled humility and pleasure. Emotions which helped them - with genuine affection - to urge their brother Mandelson to bear up to adversity, accept his defeat yesterday and learn from it.

That is the spirit of New Age Labour.