Blair dares where Gaitskell failed

THIS was the best speech by an Opposition leader since Margaret Thatcher broke Labour in 1979. It helped to set the battlelines clearly for the next election, which already promises to be the most intense and interesting contest since then. Neil Kinnock at his operatic best was more moving, John Smith had more weight. But neither man was as direct, as clean, as refreshingly nostalgia- free. Neither told it quite like this.

Tony Blair is interesting because he keeps moving the thing forward. He has the restlessness of real leadership: yesterday's coup de theatre assault on the venerable 1918 statement of Labour's values was the best example so far of a trait that has marked his short career at the top of the party.

To the majority of apolitical Britons it may seem odd that a musty old sentence scribbled a world ago by Sydney and Beatrice Webb, two of the greatest busybodies ever to adorn British public life, should arouse such interest. Can you imagine the modern Conservatives getting worked up about something said by Bonar Law, or the Liberal Democrats agonising about ditching the philosophy of Asquith?

But Labour has long been crippled by nostalgia and a paranoid obsession with betrayal. For generations, the rhythm of the Webbs' words . . . 'workers by hands or by brain . . . full fruits of their labours . . . common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange . . .' have been engraved on party members' minds and membership cards.

So when Hugh Gaitskell tried to get rid of it after the 1959 election, the party savaged him. It was as if he had tampered with the Lord's Prayer. No, it was worse than that. Gaitskell never quite recovered and since then, no Labour leader has dared try again. There has been modernisation in every area, but this one sentence has remained inviolable, a text for fundamentalists to cling to as the world swept on.

Half an hour before Blair spoke, a doughty old lady, Irene Spink, had delighted the conference by telling of when she met Keir Hardie in his cloth cap, then going on to recall the General Strike, and so on. In a defiant quaver she mocked Thatcher for asserting that 'there will never be another socialist government'. Clause IV, part four is, for the Labour Party, the Platonic essence of Irene Spink. Now it's going - sorry, Irene - and its disappearance will convince many that Baroness Thatcher was right - whether or not Blair's party wins power. The outrage of the hard left was not feigned. This is a big, even traumatic, moment in the party's history.

Blair chose to break this icon. It was not forced upon him, and many would have told him it was an unnecessary distraction. He did so because he wants to rub the country's nose in the fact that Labour has changed - that, to use his words, 'your aspirations are our aspirations. We are back as the Party of the majority in British politics.'

The main messages of his speech were all hitting the same button: 'For the Tories, the language of responsibility is what those at the top preach to the rest, while neglecting it themselves. But the left have undervalued the notion of responsibility and duty and it is time we understood how central it is.' On the economy, on education, on crime, the sentiments came in political Middle English, from a man assuming the leadership of the common-sensible majority.

On the likely battlegrounds, there was no hint of tactical retreat. This was an unequivocally Europeanist speech - 'I will never allow this country to be isolated or left behind in Europe' - and on issues such as progressive taxation, the minimum wage, the Social Chapter, Blair was gin-clear and unapologetic. No one has any excuse to argue that there is little to choose between the main parties, or to misunderstand where the fight will be.

There were, naturally, plenty of jibes. There was a sarcastic passage on what Blair regards as the Tories' excessive regard for Adam Smith's invisible hand of market forces: 'Let's just sit tight on this planet of miracles, where the free market builds business, trains employees, controls inflation, preserves demand, ensures everlasting growth . . . Welcome to Planet Portillo.'

But the most refreshing passages came when the Labour leader dropped the knockabout and spoke more openly and frankly than is the custom on such occasions. He promised a political style which 'means telling it like it is, not opposing everything every other party does for the sake of it'. That will be music to Paddy Ashdown's ears, but it may also attract the notice of voters who are weary of political point-scoring.

He even practised what he preached. When before has a Labour leader on a conference platform praised a Tory Government, as Blair did over Northern Ireland, and won applause for it? When before has a Labour leader said: 'No one believes strike ballots should be abandoned. So why do they say it? We shouldn't, and I won't' - and been applauded for it?

For most of the country, this is unexceptional, merely sensible, stuff. But in the context of the expectations of a Labour conference, it is pretty sensational. And there are signs that the message is welcomed in the party too. When Blair went on to argue that there was no choice between being principled and unelectable and 'we have tortured ourselves with this foolishness for too long', I felt an undercurrent of relief in the hall. This is not the old-time music. This is the new-time music.

It is, in the jargon of contemporary politics, pluralism. The pluralist style (open, frank, jargon- free) is probably the Opposition's greatest weapon in the coming confrontation with John Major's Conservativism. If the Tories are sensible, it will make them think twice, and then thrice, about the wisdom of swinging too far to the right ahead of the next election, of sounding too hysterically nationalistic. Can they really afford to leave Blair speaking calmly in the middle ground?

Speaking in confessional mode to senior Labour people, one is constantly struck by the poverty of their aspiration. Deep down, they are somehow reluctant to believe that the party will win; late at night one finds Shadow Cabinet folk still deeply awed by tax-cutting Tory politics, almost superstitious about the powers of Central Office, and pessimistic about getting their message over during an election campaign.

That is a sensible attitude. Good though Blair's speech was, it was a statement about the coming political battle, not the fight itself. But the highest praise one can give him is that his words will have sent a slight chill through the more thoughtful Tory strategists and ministers. Its very plainness was a threat. In its ordinariness, it was menacing. Poor old Arthur Scargill spluttered afterwards that Blair had 'declared war on the Labour Party constitution'. It seemed to me to be a declaration of war on the Labour Party's long history of failure.