A bomb went off. That's what happened when I last tried to attend a party conference. It was the Conservatives at Brighton. Ever since, I have avoided such occasions. But, as a long-standing Labour Party member, I felt reassured by the advent of Blairism. Nobody has died of bombardment by blandness. Not yet, anyway.
The Brighton Conference Centre looked strangely familiar. The ground floor was dressed up as a stylish business exhibition. There were people selling whisky, nuclear fuel, BT, Virgin Atlantic and a variety of transport. A smartly dressed man from Scottish Power gave me a light bulb "guaranteed to last five years".
Upstairs, I mingled with the delegates. "Our Mo" had just given her passionate farewell speech. "Isn't she wonderful," the delegates kept saying. Then came Rhodri Morgan, the First Secretary of Wales. "He is wonderful," several delegates told me. I went inside the conference hall to listen to Jack Straw. It was difficult to focus on his words. On the large screen behind the podium, he looked like Ann Widdecombe with an extra chromosome, as nastily dotty, but minus wit and integrity. He got a standing ovation, and the delegate sitting next to me declared: "He is just great."
I started looking for my own kind. There was a time when folks like me had to confine themselves to the "black section". Labour has weighed in huge windfalls of votes from ethnic minorities, so I expected a lot of "ethnic" faces. But there wasn't much of a rainbow coalition to be seen. There were about a dozen lonely-looking Asians who tended to stick together. "Why do you look so depressed?" I asked one. "Don't be fooled by my appearance," he said. "I am very happy. Wasn't Gordon Brown just wonderful?"
It was at this point that I realised that I wasn't in Brighton at all. I was in Singapore. The New Jerusalem of new Labour is an island in south-east Asia. The whole place had been cordoned off, separated from the real protesting, blockading, world outside. It was an island where everyone was happy, all heads nodded perpetually in agreement, and criticism and self-criticism were conspicuous by their absence. The name of the game was marketing. Everyone, from the people on the exhibition stands to those on the podium, was busy selling. The performances from the podium echoed the formula of Lee Kwan Yew, the founder and Great Leader of Singapore. They began with some jokes, followed by cheap jibes at the opposition, a list of statistics, and concluded by throwing out a few crumbs of policy - then came the standing ovation. All available on video for delegates to take home as a memento (Leader's Speech, cheap at £10).
Emla Sharkey, representing the TGWU and soon to retire, was attending her last conference. "There was a time," she said, "when conference meant an annual dust-up, suggesting that politics mattered." Now, she said in a sorrowful tone, "we have to attend seminars every morning where they try to convert you . . . Delegates behave as though they were drones. And no one has any opinions."
The opinion that used to matter at Labour conferences, Jeremy Corbyn MP told me, was grass-roots opinion. It was the rhetorical justification for everything. But new Labour peddled new dreams, and cloth-cap socialism became an outcast. So conference had to jettison its sense of history, be made anew. Cut off from its natural roots, conference has no soul - and when politics loses its soul, governments, as the Chinese say, lose "the mandate of Heaven". They still pass laws and continue some kind of pretence of governing, but they are in a vegetative state. Blandness can be deadly.
However, the analogy with Singapore should not be taken too far. The delegates smoked, chewed gum and - worse - kissed in public. So there is still hope.
Outside, it seemed to be raining all the time. And trains still did not run on time. There was even a bomb alert at Brighton station. I think I am jinxed.
Cristina Odone returns next week
