IT WAS all the spin doctor ordered, and more. New Labour's week in Blackpool left Tony Blair literally flying - a helicopter taking him on a swing through key target seats yesterday on triumphant route back to London.
The fat lady may not be singing yet but just about everybody else is. In deference to the party's past, the end of conference ritual demanded a rendition of The Red Flag. But New Labour's new anthem, Things can only get better, sent the comrades back to their constituencies convinced their long exile is coming to an end.
"We are coming home to you," Mr Blair told them on Tuesday. "We are back as the peoples' party ... Labour has come home to you. So come home to us. Labour's coming home." The Tory press detected presumption and arrogance in Mr Blair's performance, and he can exhibit too much of both. But as he returned home last night Mr Blair could be forgiven for anticipating a fresh boost in the opinion polls.
Labour's conference was everything the Tories and the left complained it was slick, stylish, shamelessly stage managed. For the second year in a row, the platform survived 90 odd votes without suffering a single reverse. While continuing his relentless raid on traditional Tory ground, Mr Blair even managed a few relatively cost free sops to Old Labour. If the religiosity, and the invocation of the Old Testament prophets were not to every taste, no matter. As a performance from a prime minister in waiting, Mr Blair's big speech was deemed a success. And he can hardly have complained that, thereafter, Labour's conference faded from the headlines under a welter of alleged Tory sleaze.
True, yesterday's front pages were not as spin doctors in chief Peter Mandelson and Alistair might have wished. The claimed its first Labour casualty, with the relatively unknown Lady Turner, employment spokeswoman in the Lords, sacked for defending the controversial lobbyist, Mr Ian Greer, in a Channel Four interview.
But even the manner of her departure was used by Mr Blair to point up the contrast with the Conservative Party's attitude to former minister, Mr Neil Hamilton, who this week sensationally walked away from his libel action against the Guardian, and finally admitted he took free holidays and £10,000 from Mr Greer.
The Labour leadership was outraged when Lady Turner, a director of Mr Greer's firm, defended his contributions to MPs' election funds on the grounds that trade unions likewise assisted many Labour MPs. By all accounts, her fate was swiftly and brutally determined. No matter that she'd been a party member for decades, nor that there was no suggestion of any impropriety on her part. Mr Blair identified "a conflict of interests" and she was out.
The Conservative Party chairman, Dr Brian Mawhinney, was last night doing his best to turn the attack on Labour. But as he prepares to leave the comfort and security of his home, Mr John Major knows next week's gathering in Bournemouth represents the most hazardous of the last conference season before the general election. It will be no comfort to Conservative managers if they already know what more is to come.
This was Mr Blair's third conference as leader and potentially his most difficult. A summer of discontent had seemed to presage an autumn of open opposition. Ms Clare Short's demotion and her bitter attacks on leadership advisers operating "in the dark", had renewed the debate about the apparent triumph of style and presentation over substance.
The early weeks of September brought the substance to the fore, renewing Old Labour's worries about the nature and purpose of Mr Blair's "modernising" drive. First, the Shadow Education and Employment Secretary, Mr David Blunkett, outraged the TUC with the suggestion of fresh laws to further curtail the right to strike.
Then his deputy, Mr Stephen Byers, told lobby journalists the party's links with the trade unions could be severed if an incoming Labour government was confronted with a summer of industrial unrest. Barely had the dust settled on that, when Dr Kim Howells - another Blair moderniser suggested the word "socialist" should be humanely phased out.
The government and the Tory press desperately hoped conference would take its revenge, and looked to a number of set piece debates where Old Labour might rear its angry head on the traditional battleground over Trident, on the minimum wage, and on pensions, where Baroness Barbara Castle was determined to do battle with Ms Harriet Harman, who so offended the left by deciding to send her child to a grammar school.
In the end, the promised or predicted revolts came to nothing. Mr Blair and Ms Harman were able to join in the standing ovations for "Battling Barbara", knowing Mr Jack Jones and his old Transport and General Workers union had put enough votes in the bag.
For once, the doctors didn't really need to "spin". The Labour Party this week could sense closeness to power, and resolved to do nothing to endanger it. Admittedly, many are less than enamoured of Mr Blair. And it was noticeable that some of the biggest cheers were for his gestures to the left, such as restoring an elected authority in London, and trades union rights to the workers at GCHQ. But the underlying message was of relentless change, with New Labour the party of small business, low tax, choice, and aspiration, all to be watched over by "iron chancellor" Gordon Brown.
The Christian Socialist Mr Blair plainly isn't everybody's cup of tea. The religious overtones won't necessarily play well with British voters. There are worrying signs of authoritarianism, most marked in Mr Jack Straw's efforts to show himself tougher than Mr Michael Howard. While Mr Blair's emphasis on education will attract support, it is by definition a longterm project. The promised Age of Achievement begs political and economic questions about precisely how New Labour will make good the promises they say the Tories have failed to deliver. But in the end they might simply opt for the "time for change" argument, and Mr Blair's patently sincere promise of "the Decent Society".
Reeling from Mr Blair's list of pledges and vows, I asked a veteran colleague what he thought. "It's enough," he replied, indicating the latest Guardian revelations about Mr Hamilton. A jubilant John Prescott yesterday hammered home the point: "I'm told some Tories think ethics is a county near Middlesex. " Not for the first time, Mr Major must be wondering what he's done to deserve his colleagues - and how he can win despite them.