Leading Article: Major's leadership on trial in Blackpool

LAST week's Labour Party conference was about modernising the party's structure to make it electable after four consecutive defeats. This week's Tory sequel is at least partly a test of whether John Major is made of the right stuff to win his party a fifth term of office. John Smith's powers of leadership, latterly under fire from internal critics, were severely tested in Brighton. After two skilful speeches and a slim victory on the one-member-one-vote issue, he emerged with his reputation and grip usefully enhanced. The pressures on Mr Major as Prime Minister have been far greater. The test he faces in Blackpool will be all the sterner.

There is a world of difference between leading a party that has been 14 years in opposition, and one visibly battered by the strains of prolonged power. The Labour gathering was essentially inward-looking. Mr Smith's big speeches were addressed much more to the assembled delegates than to the country. The still largely undrafted specifics of party policy were not for debate.

At the Conservatives' much more stage-managed jamboree, actual or possible developments in government policy will be vigorously debated. Mr Major will have to convince the country as well as the party that the right decisions are being taken; that they will help to unite a deeply divided party; and that they will bring back to the fold many of those who have begun to lose faith.

Two linked approaches will, it is understood, be adopted. One will be to use the party faithful to bring pressure for unity to bear on the fractious and fractured parliamentary party. The other will be to stress the close links between Majorism and Thatcherism, with the Prime Minister being painted as the true inheritor of the blessed Margaret. To that end there will be a marked swing to the right in the presentation of new policies and justification of old ones. This could even reverse some decisions of the Thatcher years.

For example, where in the Eighties the Government set about reducing the prison population, the Home Secretary, Michael Howard, is expected to announce measures that put the incarceration of criminals before fears of further costly riots resulting from gross overcrowding.

Such moves are likely to prove short-sighted, and will not convince Mr Major's critics that he is his own man. To do that, he must himself tackle the issues that divide his party - VAT on fuel, the desirability of further tax increases, and the EC - in a way that leaves no doubt that he is in charge.

As always on such occasions, style will be as important as content. Both John Major and John Smith suffer from appearing to be natural managers rather than leaders. Mr Smith lacks Neil Kinnock's gifts as a platform speaker. He is at his best in the cut and thrust of the Commons. Mr Major excels neither in the Commons nor in set-piece speeches, but in small groups. In Blackpool he plans to speak from headline notes rather than a text. The resulting improvement will have to be dramatic if it is to show that he is - to borrow Mr Lamont's phrase - not just in office, but in power.