ANOTHER VOICE

I was wearing a designer suit, so of course they thought I was new Labour

PETRONELLA WYATT

nce the Tories were the Landed Party, then the Stupid Party. Last week Conservative Central Office unveiled the name on which it will be going to the coun- try: the Ordinary Party. It would be hard to deny that there was something chilling about Labour's Black- pool conference. 'New' Labour often seems to have Freon refrigerating its bloodstream. The Tories were making the most of this. At the bar in the Highcliffe, the conference hotel teeming with that repetition and suc- cession of massed party members, a minis- ter explained to me: 'Blair is not in the English political tradition. All that raving about millennia — it's sinister and foreign.' `Like Mussolini?' I asked. He was shocked. `Certainly not Mussolini was more mod- est.'

So that was it then. Labour was sinister and foreign, so the Tories would be English and normal. The driving force behind the conference was that there was no driving force. It was carefully orchestrated spon- taneity. Even the spin doctors have changed their name. 'I'm not a spin doctor any more,' said one of the younger ones. `I'm a media helper.' Oh good,' I said. 'A helper.' That was reassuring to know. 'Get it?! he went on. 'We're real, we show up Labour. "New" Labour is The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. You know, that film in which aliens take over human bodies.' I thanked him. That was indeed helpful.

The morning I arrived at Bournemouth, Central Office workers and constituency representatives were mouthing the new mantra: 'We are the party of the hard- working classes.' (One thought that the Tories were the party of the hard-drinking classes but, no matter, they could be both.) This was as opposed to being the party of the 'chattering classes' — a reference to `new' Labour, though these days Labour appears strictly forbidden from chattering.

Every Tory did his bit to be ordinary. The Prime Minister even went as far as to set up his headquarters in a former coastguards hut. It was rumoured that a Central Office memo advised MPs to avoid 'exclusive' drinks like champagne in favour of beer. At lunchtime ministers drank pints of Tetley and went to chippies. One might say that they were trying to climb the greasy prole.

There were moments, however, when Central Office could not resist showing off its technological skills — after all, the Tories were not yet the party of the Lud- dite classes. Have you seen the set?' I was asked excitedly. 'Whose set?' I enquired. `No, I mean the stage set.' This turned out to be a New Age melange of blue pyramids. It should have stuck to being ordinary. Cabinet ministers looked uncomfortably like they were in Madame Vasso's boudoir.

Then there was Dr Mawhinney. It is diffi- cult to think of him as 'real '— indeed one would prefer to think that he did not exist at all. The head of research at Central Office is a bright young man called Danny Finkelstein. Wags were referring to the party Chairman as Dr Finkelstein's mon- ster. Mawhinney, unwisely, was in charge of producing 'ordinary people' for the delecta- tion of the conference. These included a fisherman who had switched his political allegiance from Labour. The poor man was dragged on stage as if he was to make a public confession of his sins before being turned over to the executioner.

At least there was little of that tiresome `vision thing'. It's now the 'normality thing'. Oddly, there was no need for the Tories to have tried quite so hard. With the excep- tion of Dr Mawhinney, Mrs Teresa Gor- man and some of the Euro-hysterics, they are ordinary. They have made their political fortune out of it — by identifying with the aspirations of the ordinary man. 'Damn the Tories,' said Lord Palmerston, 'they're dullards and it wins 'em votes.'

At last year's Labour conference, dressed in some designer suit, I was mistaken for a Tory. In Bournemouth, wearing the same outfit, I was mistaken for 'new' Labour.

One had difficulty distinguishing between the Bournemouth locals and the- conference-goers. Some of my media col- leagues have been referring to an instru- ment of their own invention called the `tottymeter', which is, apparently, a register of beautiful young women. The tottymeter at Blackpool, for the first time, had gone beserk. In Bournemouth the needle failed to pass the first mark. The `hunkometer', the corresponding register of good-looking men, was moving even more slowly.

The only things that moved were the canapes. If obesity is predominantly the province of those ordinary people, the Tories are on to a vote-catcher. Their MPs are not only uglier, they are fatter. At the BBC party even Virginia Bottomley dipped her toe into some cholesterol, while minis- ters at Lord Hesketh's late-night salons swooped and dived on the food like scenic railway carriages. One confided, 'The real reason we keep Ken Clarke is because he looks even more unfit than the man in the street.'

It has often been said, of course, that no one could be more ordinary than Mr Major. The Prime Minister's diary, on the opposite page, may disprove this view, but, as a Cabinet colleague put it, if Mr Mandel- son is the prince of darkness, Mr Major is the prince of normality. According to one of those surveys he is particularly appealing to the average woman. Everywhere Mr Major went in Bournemouth crowds of them were sure to follow.

Curiously, Conservative representatives divided on Mr Blair according to gender. The men were less hostile towards him than the women. Male Tories either grudg- ingly conceded his political skill or were merely dismissive. The women positively loathed him.

But women are the greater pragmatists. Men are attracted to high-flown oratory women are instinctively suspicious. They know that all that glitters metaphysically is not gold. It won't pay the bills. As for Big Ideas: what's the big idea? Mr Blair may have many ideas, but who is to say that they are not the wrong ones. Miss Joan Knight, a representative from Dartford, said to me that 'Blair is just a weirdo fanatic'.

One has to say that compared to Mr Blair even Lady Thatcher seemed comfort- ingly ordinary in her extraordinariness. The Tory conference has not been exciting. But I slowly realised that this came as a relief. The audience did not look like extras from The Manchurian Candidate. When they saw Mr Major they did not hyperventilate except for one 82-year-old man at the back with asthma. They gave him instead their sincere and calm support.

It was like a period of flat weather after a hurricane. There is much to say for qui- etude. It outdistances the thundering storm. It is about the important, often underrated things like forethought, care and realism. The Tories in Bournemouth are praying that the average British voter wearies of Mr Blair's perpetual, screeching maelstrom. Perhaps Central Office went overboard in pointing up the `normality thing'. But after Blackpool, Bournemouth was an almost therapeutic experience.