And so it came to pass much as we had expected: in the greatest political anticlimax since the general election result, the Labour Party conference forgathered in Brighton yesterday and with little or no fuss elected the man who will be its next chairman, Mr Sam McCluskie.
The conference also elected Mr Neil Kinnock to be its next leader, but that had been predicted in the media for years and, by tradition, voting is only a formality once Mr Clive Jenkins has expressed his preference on the television. Mr McCluskie, the burly representative of the Seamen╒s Union on Labour╒s NEC, is chairman this year. Comparatively speaking, he was yesterday╒s dark horse.
Even so, the 29-second ovation, largely of the sedentary variety, when Mr Kinnock╒s victory was finally announced, looked decidedly restrained for an electoral college which had just voted as overwhelmingly as this one had ╤ even allowing for the fact that the tellers seemed to have done their sums wrong in the finest tradition of the party.
At Mr Kinnock╒s side on the platform, Mr Alex Kitson, of the TGWU, warmly shook the victor╒s hand. For a moment Mr Kinnock joined in the applause, then thought better of it and stroked his tie instead.
From the floor Mrs Kinnock came to join her husband, still able to walk after trundling up and down Brighton beach all the weekend for the photographers. Mr Kinnock waved a bunch of red roses on high in what may well be the first of many bridge-building gestures towards important segments of the electorate ╤proof to a segment variously estimated at between 10 and 25 per cent of the voters that he was not just another macho heterosexual leader of the Labour Party like Mr Attlee.
With no more ado the conference returned to normal business: Mr Tam Dalyell making an appeal for our environment, not forgetting the black-tailed godwit. Thus was demonstrated a central tenet of Labour╒s faith, that policies, not personalities, are what matter.
So television viewers, turning in to inspect the New Jerusalem, had to wait a couple of hours for Mr Kinnock to storm the conference, which he duly did. This time the applause was much more positive. In the judgment of one laconic veteran, ╥It╒ll do, it╒ll do very well for now.╙
