What to watch for in Bournemouth

Gordon’s first Labour conference as Prime Minister begins today: it could conceivably be his last. Just as last year’s gathering of the party in Manchester was dominated by Tony Blair’s farewell and the prospects for smooth transition to the Brown regime, the proceedings in Bournemouth will be consumed by a single question and one that will almost certainly not be mentioned on the conference floor: the timing of the election (see Andrew Rawnsley’s typically shrewd analysis of the pros and cons of an early poll in today’s Observer).

As absorbing as this question undoubtedly is – will he? won’t he? –  it also pays to listen to what Brown actually says and to take it at face value, as I argue in the Sunday Telegraph: he is not a poetic speaker and so the literal truth and dramatic policy implications of what he says are often overlooked. When we first said that he wanted a “ministry of all the talents”, everyone assumed this was just a banal phrase deployed for the purposes of party management and to appease the Blairites: in fact its meaning was much more profound.

In an interview with the Sunday Times, Brown puts the NHS at the forefront of his campaign: he was appalled when the Tories achieved a remarkable opinion poll lead in this area of policy, Labour’s most sacred terrain. His mantra – “education is my passion, health is my priority” – is eloquent enough. No less striking is the robust Sarkozian language he uses in the interview when discussing immigration:

I obviously recognise the contribution that people who have come to our country have made to our economy. I think people do recognise that. It’s a policy in our country of managed migration. We’re stepping up controls by introducing a points system. I am very clear that people have responsibilities as potential incomers to our country to learn our language, to understand our traditions, to meet their obligations, to play by the rules in this country. I think you will see that citizenship and also presence in our country have to be met by people who accept their duties and obligations to the country to which they have come.

Brown’s election pitch will not be soft-centred: it will emphasise the “British way of life” and the necessity for all to play by the rules. And this choice of strategy and the sections of the electorate it is likely to appeal to tells you in turn something about the scale of his ambition. The Prime Minister is promising a sweep of the nation’s hospitals and health facilities to purge the nation of MRSA. But the superbug he really has in his sights is Contagious Cameronism: a virus whose spread has presently stalled but might resume its work if Dave does well in Blackpool.