OJ diversion seen as a cunning Tory ploy

It was like a rerun of that old Vick's Sinex advert featuring Malcolm and his blocked nose. At 6pm yesterday, everywhere in the Brighton conference centre people were tearing off in search of televisions, asking the question of anyone they passed: "What's the verdict?"

"Blair's speech? Brilliant."

"No, silly, the OJ trial."

It was going to take a seismic event to keep Tony Blair's efforts from dominating the front pages. And from the land of the earthquake it came: the Simpson acquittal was set to juice all opposition for the headlines.

The question Labour delegates - never slow at sniffing a conspiracy theory - wanted answered was: never mind how much OJ had slipped the jury, how much had Tory central office given Judge Ito to time the verdict so inconveniently for Mr Blair?

Not that he did not try valiantly in the face of the opposition. Earlier in the day, Brian Wilson MP had eulogised him from the platform as a leader of such wide-ranging quality, he was even an expert at keepy-uppy. As he had demonstrated with Kevin Keegan on Monday, Blair knows how to control a football; yesterday he showed he is equally adept at controlling an audience.

Shot through with the Blairite mantra - the words "young", "new" and "superhighway" - it was a speech full of firsts. Here was the first time a Labour leader had so vigorously appropriated Tory values (the family, the law, the Union Jack). The first time a Labour leader had triumphed in deals with big business (New Labour: not so much the party of opportunity as the party of BT.) And, in his central words "let me tell you about my generation", Mr Blair became the first prospective Prime Minister to be apparently scripted by Pete Townshend.

Indeed it was not only the words of the speech that reminded you of a pop concert. It had much of the rhythm and pacing too. There was the big start ("last year I was Bambi, this year I'm Stalin ... from Disneyland to dictator in 12 months"); there was the new material slipped, to muted applause, into the middle; and there was the medley of old hits - bringing back the GLC, stopping rail privatisation, condemning French nuclear tests - towards the end.

And then there was the climax, saving the favourite tune till last, the one that goes: bash, bash, bash the Tories. A six-minute ovation it earned him, first alone, then hand in hand with Cherie, then in a cosy foursome with the Prescotts, then alone again, providing the photographers with a dozen different angles. Snaps which will now, thanks to Judge Ito, be carried on pages eight and nine. So much for the media manipulation of New Labour.

So thwarted were they on their big day yesterday, you imagine that the clever apparatchiks who surround Mr Blair had already sent a delegation spinning down the not-so-super highway to Winchester to persuade the judge in the Rosemary West case to save a particularly gruesome bit of evidence for next Thursday. About the time John Major is getting to his feet in Blackpool.