Bill Clinton on Tony and Gordon

Little Rock, Arkansas

What can be done to bring order to a fractious Labour party? Inside Little Rock’s Alltel Arena, home of the Arkansas Twisters football team and filled with local Democrats greedily consuming mounds of deep-fried frogs’ legs washed down with vats of iced tea, the question was hardly a burning one.

It was a balmy evening and no one seemed much exercised by the travails of Tony Blair or the overweening ambition of Gordon Brown. Indeed, there was talk of nothing much beyond the borders of a Southern state still viewed by most of the rest of the union as a poor, illiterate cousin.

Except from one man. As he roared with laughter, signed autographs and waited with cheerful indulgence as clammy-fingered fans struggled to operate their digital cameras at the crucial moment, Bill Clinton was only too happy to offer his opinions on Labour’s future.

Clinton, who had arrived on stage to the strains of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘The Rising’, delivered a pitch-perfect 12-minute stump speech without notes before descending to commune with the crowd.

‘May I feel your arms around me,’ belted out Bruce, who was being given a reprise. ‘May I feel your blood mix with mine.’ Now 60, the kid from Hot Springs who went all the way to the White House did the first bit literally and, instinctive politician that he is, the second metaphorically for a few minutes shy of an hour.

‘I just want them to stay together, to decide what to do and keep the Labour party together,’ he told me as his Secret Service agents fought a losing battle to keep the sweaty mass of ordinary folks from engulfing him. ‘The political difficulties of the moment should not obscure for the British people the fact that this government has been good for their country.’