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.