Mr Blair’s last bow

In Manchester on Tuesday, Tony Blair will deliver his 13th and final speech as Labour leader to the party’s conference. Over the years, his addresses to the rank and file have been a reliable source of slogans and soundbites that have entered the political bloodstream: ‘Labour’s coming home’ (1996); ‘a thousand days to prepare for a thousand years’ (1997); ‘backbone, not backdown’ (1998); ‘the forces of conservatism’ (1999); ‘my irreducible core’ (2000); ‘the kaleidoscope has been shaken’ (2001); ‘at our best when at our boldest’ (2002); ‘I’ve not got a reverse gear’ (2003); and ‘every time I’ve ever introduced a reform in government, I wish in retrospect I had gone further’ (2005). There can be no doubt that the most incorrigibly thespian Prime Minister of modern times will be coining a bon mot or two for his rhetorical farewell.

Mr Blair’s conference speeches have differed sharply in tone and urgency since the geopolitical rupture of 11 September 2001. Once embarked upon his joint mission with George W. Bush, the Labour leader always had to devote a substantial portion of his annual speech to anti-Americanism and a plea to his party not to let its loathing of the Republican President cloud its judgment.

Yet — on the domestic front — his message has scarcely changed since his first such address in Blackpool 12 years ago. ‘Today’s politics,’ he said in 1994, ‘is about the search for security in a changing world.’ The Tories, in his view, could not deliver this security; Labour, therefore, had to reassure the public that it could, that it had ditched old-fashioned socialism (‘It’s time to change’), that it was ‘tough on crime’, that it was on the side of parents and patients in its public service policy, and that it would deliver ‘a politics of courage, honesty and trust’.