More fizz, darlings? That's Labour's luvvie-in

You simply have to be there. It is the latter-day equivalent of The Season, only sexier. Everybody, but everybody, wants to be at Tony Blair's coronation ball.

Time was when the Labour Party conference was attended only by gnarled old boiler-makers and wimmin in boiler suits. They argued all day about seizing the commanding heights of the economy, and spent their nights at a series of piss-ups in under-heated hotel suites where bored waitresses handed out warm bottles of beer and curly sarnies remaindered by British Rail. If you were lucky.

Brighton 1997 is plainly going to be a watershed. Bottled, naturally. Chic, without the radical. Organisers for this week's conference have been inundated with demands for accreditation - 23,000 in total, roughly akin to a good parliamentary majority on 1 May - and the participants will live in a small town behind the security wire.

Will they be unhappy? No, they will not. Champagne has replaced light ale. It is no longer necessary to endure a lecture on industrial democracy from a shop steward while he mops his perspiring brow with a paper napkin. Now, you can gate-crash the Harpers & Queen champagne bash and rub shoulders with executives from Cosmopolitan and Country Living, with a slight dash of House Beautiful and She.

They are only a taster of the revolution in New Labour's brave new world. The conference fringe used to be a choice between Arthur Scargill's brief, hour-long rant in a draughty church hall on why he is worth his pounds 60,000- plus a year, and canapes with the adventurous Local Government Information Unit. Things can only get wetter. This year, many of the fringe meetings in the 46-page glossy guide to the fringe (sponsored by Enterprise plc, naturally) offer wine and a "finger buffet". This will come as an immense relief to delegates, who always wondered whether it was socially acceptable to down a gherkin 'n cheese whatsit in one hand, while surreptitiously wiping t'fingers on t'curtains. "Nice bitter cloth, eh, Fred?" Munch, munch.

Of course, there have always been businesses with an eye on the main chance. British Airways has served champagne to Tories and Labour alike without discrimination for years, though their talkative host, Lord King, was not everybody's idea of in-flight entertainment. They are being joined this year by the privatised fat cats, who booked space in the conference exhibition as though it was going out of fashion. United Utilities, whose bosses would have sunk Chancellor Brown's windfall tax if they could, rub shoulders with Charter 88. The Institute of Directors, lottery operators Camelot and Richard Branson's Virgin Trains sit alongside War on Want.

Most visible of all, of course, will be the luvvies. Lenny Henry, Hugh Laurie, Ben Elton and Sir David Puttnam will all be there, as will Alan McGee of Creation Records, who discovered Oasis, Carmen Callil, the founder of Virago books - even the England soccer coach, Glenn Hoddle.

The appearance of the real star, Tony Blair, on Tuesday, is an all-ticket affair, with only 300 tickets for the 5,000 media present in the town. Naturally, the BBC has demanded 90 of them and is only slowly being beaten down to half that number. The theme of the speech of the year will be permanent cultural revolution. Now that he has modernised the Labour Party, he will modernise the country. Oh, and there will be an obligatory mention of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the legacy of compassion she has left us.

The luvvies will clap and cheer, and then head off for more champagne. There is a profusion of choice. They can either slug it back at the expense of the TV licence payer with the BBC's "croak-voiced Dalek", John Birt, or head for the Asda party at the Grand. Your correspondent will have to make do with warm ale with London Transport at the Old Ship.