http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour2005/comment/0,16394,1581566,00.html'Someone reckons the Countryside Alliance stand has been smashed up again," says a Labour party steward, standing sentry by the entrance to the Brighton Centre. "I can't say I'm surprised." A five-minute journey along the exterior of the Grand Hotel, past the endless yards of wire mesh and crowds of gun-wielding cops, round a corner and up the steps of the grim metallic bridge that leads to the exhibitors' area, and the rumours are proved correct. Some time after 1am, the stall, festooned with pictures of angling toddlers and happy huntswomen, was indeed half-wrecked: repeatedly slashed with what must have been a sharp blade and adorned with marker-pen scribbles excising enough letters from the word "Countryside" to spell out - oh, the wit of it all - a quite different C-word.
Any other excitement, however, is all but impossible to find. Fringe meetings vibrate with the low hum of policy-wonkery, delegates make impossibly polite enquiries at Q&A sessions, and - as the tepid reception given to Gordon Brown's speech proved - even the most stirring rhetoric bounces around the walls before falling strangely flat. Out among the stands, you can sense New Labour's strangely deflated spirit, as across the gentle hubbub at the cafe tables, tweeting from the flat-screen TVs like the output of Orwell's telescreens, there comes that noise: "Renewal ... Common endeavour ... Community ... Historic third term ... Renewal ..."
And, of course, the idea that conference wields any clout has seemingly gone for ever. "What's conference for?" considers Patricia Hewitt, as I chase her down the corridors of the Metropole hotel, with her special adviser looking anxiously at my tape recorder. As is her way, she then dispenses a handful of sentences in a voice that makes her sound like a member of the royal family. "To bring together people from all over our country, throughout the Labour movement, to meet each other, to meet government ministers, to ... if you like, just renew everybody's sense of purpose, but even more importantly, to discuss and share what we're doing, so we achieve all our manifesto commitments as effectively as possible." ("Thank you," she regally concludes, before gliding through a set of double doors.) Roughly translated, that means all those millions are spent on an event somewhere between a four-day rally and a highly drilled training school. Well away from the floor, in fact, there lurks exactly that: an area known as the campaign training room, where those who still stuff envelopes and knock on doors can receive their annual instructions.
And if the vote on those plans for the NHS goes against the government, does that have any consequences? "Erm ... No," Alan Milburn says. "Because we've got a manifesto. Heard of that? The manifesto, that the party, and the government, put together, and even more importantly, that was endorsed by the public." As it happens, some of the most controversial aspects of what's being proposed weren't actually in the manifesto. But anyway, Milburn seems to be of the opinion that the unions and their allies are wasting their breath.
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