Labour 1

THE LOVE OF POWER

Or the power of love? Whatever it was,

Petronella Wyatt found New Labour

had a lot of it

Brighton DELEGATES here were faced with what Mr Blair would call 'a hard choice'. John Prescott had told them to 'enjoy our victo- ry, wallow in our victory, celebrate our vic- tory'. The Prime Minister warned against complacency. By Tuesday evening, howev- er, they had chosen. They were going to wallow.

The wallowing started cautiously at first. Like desert travellers taunted by the thought that the oasis they have reached is just a mirage, they seemed frightened that everything would be taken away — or that Peter Mandelson would appear suddenly and tell them all to get back to work.

'I still can't believe we made it,' said one delegate, standing, dazed and shimmering with sweat, at the bar of the Metropole. 'You won't believe this but when I read in the paper this morning that Heseltine had decided not to go to Blackpool, for one split second I thought, Christ, the Deputy Prime Minister isn't going to his own con- ference.'

Then the release came — like a tornado after heavy quietude. At the Young Labour disco they watched in awe as Peter Mandelson gyrated to Sex Machine. Then they broke loose. It was like observing a victory dance of Watusi tribesmen. They didn't need the shiny floor; they were dancing on hypostatic adrenalin.

Even Old Labour was caught up in it. At a party afterwards at the Grand Hotel, trade unionists with spreading waistlines downed the free liquor as if they had been living under a long period of prohibition. They dipped and swooped on the modish- looking canapes with a frantic hunger. One could say that it was a case of better fed than Red.

There was, undoubtedly, a frisson of something in the Brighton air. Old Labour scandals used to be financial. This was for social and economic reasons: while Labour remained a working-class party its mem- bers were anxious to supplement their incomes by whatever means available. On the other hand, they had wives from Brad- ford who looked like the leaders of Soviet tank corps and hit them on the head with rolling-pins to prevent them from flirting with other women. But things have changed. The Bradford wives have gone and the apostles of Blairism are better paid. They were the masters now — and they were in search of mistresses.

'I haven't had sex for 18 years,' declared a middle-aged Labour MP who had lurched up to me in the Metropole bar. I commiserated and asked politely if this had been caused by a physical complica- tion. 'Bloody hell, no. More like a political one: the Tories. Good-looking women don't want to sleep with you when you're in opposition.'

There were signs everywhere saying, 'Have you got your pass?' They should have read, 'Have you made your pass?' Sex was on the brain here — though in most cases that is where it remained. The trouble was, as Simon Sebag Montefiore pointed out last week, that New Labour men are not really attracted to Labour women. No one could deny that the latter were more appetising than their hard Left predecessors but few resembled Barbara Follett, the impeccably groomed MP wife of Ken Follett, the novelist.

'The trouble with Labour women is that they are all overweight.' said a minister. 'Oswald Mosley was quite right when he said vote Labour but 1— Tory.'

Not that all New Labour men stood up to scrutiny. While Tories can be repulsive, young New Labour can be frightening. The faces of its young footsoldiers were as smooth and white as cake-batter, their eyes popping with earnestness. They reminded one of the sort of people who 'Outrageous! He claims it was ghost written.' were unpopular at school because they wore the wrong clothes and listened to the wrong music. Now they were in power and it was the revenge of the Widmerpools.

Everything at the conference was there to remind them of their victory. In the con- ference centre a shop sold souvenirs, an idea borrowed from political conventions in America. There were Christmas cards showing Tony and Cherie Blair, with the caption 'We celebrated early this year'. (Was this in line with Mr Blair's professed Christianity, to celebrate the triumph of Blairism above the birth of Christ?) There were Labour ties, in red for Old Labour and in blue for New. Mugs engraved with the slogan 'Treat more NHS patients' stood next to more mugs saying 'No rise in income tax rates'. One marvelled at the 'inclusiveness' of it all.

Aside from a few hard Left party-poop- ers (of the social and political variety) like Dennis Skinner and Tony Benn, Labour was united in its desire to 'modernise'. A few years ago champagne was as likely to be found at Labour conferences as Joan Collins. Miss Collins wasn't there —though Mariella Frostrup, from television, was — but champagne engulfed us like the sea. David Blunkett and George Robertson, the Defence Secretary, cracked open the bot- tles at English's, Brighton's most expensive fish restaurant, where tables are placed catty-corner to each other. Fringe meetings no longer offered sandwiches or even cod and chips. The British Hyperlipidaemia Association advertised 'wholemeal scones with smoked salmon and Greek yoghurt' followed by 'bulgur wheat and sundried tomato-stuffed vegetables' and 'crudités with salsa and guacamole dip'.

But the party hierachy was considering even greater reforms than these. The Labour party conference lasts five days. This is because working men used to take their weekly holidays at conference, hence the location at seaside resorts. There was talk, however that if Mr Blair pushed through his party reforms the conference may be reduced to three days. 'The work- ing man for whom it was designed no longer exists,' said a minister. 'The confer- ence is becoming an irrelevance. It's far too long and it's too expensive.'

By the end of the week delegates had thrown caution to the wind. Unable to get a room in Brighton, I was staying in a hotel about 20 minutes outside the town. The rooms were named after well-known histor- ical lovers: Lady Hamilton, Madame de Pompadour, Nell Gwynn, Casanova and so forth. One afternoon, in the corridor, I heard a Labour delegate, accompanied by a woman, asking for a room. The manager replied that he might either have one upstairs with a bathroom — or the Casano- va room with a shower. The delegate's voice boomed with pleasure. 'It's no bleed- ing contest, is it? We'll have the Casanova suite.' He had obviously taken to heart Mr Blair's exhortation to 'give'.