At last night’s Labour gala dinner in Brighton Lesley Garrett treated paying guests to a rendition of Andy Williams’ classic, The Impossible Dream. Lyrics include:

“And the world will be better for this
That one man scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star.”

Hat tip: Dermot Finch

UPDATE

It gets worse. I’ve just checked out the lyrics. They include a string of allusions to inevitable defeat, unreachable stars and so on. “Impossible dream”, “unbeatable foe”, “unbearable sorrow”, “unreachable star”, “no matter how hopeless”, “to be willing to die”

The only positive comparison you could make is that the singer does want the world to be a better place. Otherwise, what an inappropriate choice. Whose crazy idea was this?

For those who care, Will Straw has a “word cloud” which shows which words cropped up the most.

3.33 Well, that’s it folks. The prime minister has kissed his wife. The delegates are on their feet. They’ve been told that their “abiding duty” is to “stand, and fight, and win, and serve”. They’ve been shown the sunny uplands and been told to “never stop believing in the good sense of the British people”. Because the task is difficult “the triumph will be even greater”, he promises. It seems to have all gone down well in the hall.

3.29 Brown is already nabbing ideas from Obama. Curtis Mayfield’s ‘Move On Up’, which was used in Brown’s introductory video, was part of the Obama campaign. Great tune though. There is also a bit of Nixonian campaigning in the speech where you wouldn’t expect it. The pledge to “cure cancer in a generation”. Vintage Nixon, 1971.

3.24 (Jim) Labour will put a referendum on Proportional Representation in its election manifesto (to be held early in the next Parliament). This is interesting. My sources had told me there would be a cabinet-level meeting next week to discuss the issue. Alan Johnson had been among those calling for the referendum to take place on the same day as the election itself. Some of his colleagues thought this was bonkers. Clearly the home secretary has been over-ruled.

3.20 (Jim) Brown promises to combine the National Health Service with local care provision to make a new “National Care Service”. Our public policy editor Nick Timmins looks utterly baffled: “Does it actually mean anything,” he asks plaintively.

3.10 (Jim) I’m wondering about food analogies for the Brown delivery. If Mandelson was lemon sorbet yesterday, is Brown porridge? It’s all very worthy and fact-filled but I’m not feeling the feelgood factor.

3.16 (Jim again) Brown makes the pre-announced policy about a new right for cancer patients to have diagnostic tests carried out and completed within a week. Incidentally, do normal people ever use the phrase “general practioner”?

3.09 (Jim again) Gordon is promising to preserve our security while “never undermining our liberties”. It sounds like he is making a new policy pledge (”I can say to you today….”) as he says there will be no compulsory ID card for British citizens in the next Parliament. Cry freedom! Except that this policy is old. The home secretary in March (Jacqui Smith) said that the ID card would be voluntary.

3.05 It looks like he has sought inspiration from his father’s classic sermons to the kirk. He’s announced U-turn on 24-hour drinking. He said “markets need morals”. He wants “tough love” for “chaotic families”. Let’s see what he says about cleaning up politics.

3.03 So far this is shaping up to be a policy greatest hits speech. Very little about Gordon the man. The policy shopping-list is quite Clintonesque — a nod to every micro-group of voters. But you have to wonder whether he needs to open up more.

3.00 (Jim again) I thought the recent row over whether the UK needed to cut public spending had been resolved. But this seems to have passed Gordon by. “These are not cuts they would make because they have to,” he says of the Tories. “These are spending cuts they are making because they want to. It is not inevitable.”

2.58 We’re intrigued by the words on schools spending. “We will not cut support to our schools. We will not invest less, but more.” Now this could be a significant move to increase the education budget in real terms, which has big knock on effects for other departments. Or it could mean ring-fencing the schools budget.Or he could just be increasing spending in cash terms, while making real-terms savings. We’ll have to wait and see.

2.55 (Jim here) Brown claims that Britain is leading the charge on having a “green” economy. “We are already global leaders in wind power, green cars, clean coal and carbon capture”, he claims. The truth is somewhat different. Sorry to be difficult, but Britain is behind every other EU country on renewable energy - bar Malta, Cyprus and Belgium. Gordon has just promised to create “over a quarter of a million new green British jobs”. In previous months he has made similar pledges; for 100,000, 160,000 and 1m jobs. Which if any is true? Does the prime minister have the faintest clue?

2.54 Brown sings the virtues of a £1bn innovation fund. It’s not new.

2.53 “Any director of any banks who is negligent will be disqualified from holding any such post.” Seems stating the obvious. But how many bank directors have been disqualified?

2.51 (Jim here) I told you it was getting a tad Biblical. Gordon is now the Good Samaritan: “What the British people want to know is that their government will not pass by on the other side but will be on their side.”

2.48 Gordon is now lovebombing middle England. “Call them middle class values, call them traditional working class values, call them family values, call them all of these; these are the values of the mainstream majority; the anchor of Britain’s families, the best instincts of the British people, the soul of our party and the mission of our government.”

2.46 (Jim here) Gordon is moving into preacher territory with a string of parables. “Like the small businessman who came to see me when his credit dried up at the bank. He was crying with the shame of missing some payments, but so responsible was he, that he was determined that every penny he owed would be paid.” I myself have been having a few problems with my credit card - will the PM help me?

2.44 Tory government would bring back the cardboard shanty towns of the 1980s.

2.36 Oh how he loves big numbers. “A global deal that I can tell you will save 15m jobs!”

2.35 (Jim here). Brown praises his chancellor, Alistair Darling, saying “Alistair, you are doing an absolutely brilliant job.” Is this the same Darling that the PM tried to move out of the Treasury in June but was unable to because of his political weakness? Or another one.

2.34 This is a new Brown technique. He started with fighting talk — fight, fight, fight. Then he moves to a list of Labour’s achievements — but it’s deliberately long this time, rather than just poor speechwriting. The crowd love it. I can even hear whoops.

2.33 “My husband, my hero”. Groans in the press gallery.

2.32 This is so heavy with sugar it would rot your teeth. It moves seamlessly from herograms from Bono and Stiglitz to pics of kids in the playground. Labour aren’t pulling their punches.

2.31 The second propaganda video rolls. Younger people this time. And Curtis Mayfield, Move on Up…

2.30. “I know he loves our country”.

2.30 Sarah Brown is up. It’s her second turn at the Labour conference. The hot topic is already her dress.

2.28: Welcome to our live blog on the Gordon Brown speech. The queues for sandwiches have wound down and the faithfaul have taken their pews. Brown should be appearing soon. The propaganda video is rolling. Lots of shots of Sptifires and 1940s doctors. Oh, and Gordon smiling. This should be fun.

It is rare for a conference speech to win the praises of Matthew Engel, our political sketchwriter, whose shrewd observations are up there with the best of his trade.

But even he ponders this morning whether the prospect of PM for PM is now more likely after what was universally seen as a great speech yesterday by Lord Mandelson. “Yesterday morning I would have laughed in your face. Right now I am not quite so sure,” he says.

It’s also worth reading the witty sketch by Simon Hoggart, who acknowledged the genuine acclaim in the conference hall given to the business secretary by the party hordes…albeit before comparing him to a “slightly creepy uncle”.

“No matter that the speech was bonkers. The business secretary was by turns coy, kittenish, camp and crazed. Occasionally his voice rose to a squeak, his facial expressions were frankly weird, and now and again he slowed alarmingly as if his carburettor had cut out.”

Back in the real world, however. I went down to Hove (pictured below) this morning to talk to some locals about the prospects for Labour there; the party holds the seat with a majority of just 420. Did anyone mention any of the conference speeches? Nope.

It’s always struck me as a tad strange how the political winds blow behind certain individuals - and then shift direction within days. It wasn’t long ago that the entire Westminster bubble was discussing the idea of Alan Johnson (”the postie”, as he is described by some of Gordon Brown’s loyalists) as a future Labour leader. Now the winds appear to be behind Ed Miliband, after he was endorsed by Derek Simpson and a few others. There is often no rhyme or reason behind the shifts. One day’s hero is tomorrow’s zero - and vice versa. Is the younger Miliband really a rising star, or are you just repeating something you heard over coffee this morning? I’ve no idea.

Anyway, Charlie Bibby has captured this shot of Johnson’s speech at conference this morning. It speaks for itself.

(To be fair, it was a bit early in the day….but still….)

He finally said it. There will be cuts. But Gordon Brown waited until he was nearly half an hour into his speech to admit it. (Bottom of page 7 out of 8).

And he wedged the stuff about deficit, hard choices, sustainable finances, cutting costs into a handful of paragraphs. The rest of the speech was the usual glorious talk about saving the global economy, the national economy and the range of initiatives which Labour has thrown out in the last year. And - to be fair - there were two genuinely big policy pledges.

More paternity leave and the swift implementation* of the temporary workers directive will please unions and, you’d have thought, workers. The business lobby might not be so happy but neither concept is exactly a surprise (the only question on the directive was its exact timing).

*UPDATE

My eagle-eyed colleague Jean Eaglesham points out that the government is only putting the temporary workers directive on the statute book in the next Parliamentary year. This is not the same as the implementation date. We still don’t know when that is going to be. In other words, this may not be much of a gift to the unions (and temps) as it sounded at first.

That was a teaser headline.

I’ve just listened to the shadow welfare secretary for the best part of an hour and I still haven’t a clue what would change under a Tory government vis a vis the benefits system.

To be fair, I don’t normally cover DWP. An expert may have gleaned some policy gems from Ms May’s speech at the Policy Exchange HQ in Westminster this morning. Or maybe not.

Here are some immediate thoughts:

1] May believes that there are whole communities now where the social norm is “antisocial behaviour and idleness” rather than “hard work and discipline”. This seems to me like rather jarring language.

2] She would not answer my question about whether benefits could fall if RPI deflation continues (it’s potentially part of the solution to the national deficit). “I’m not going to answer it and I’m not going to give any answers today on benefits,” she said. “We’re not going to write a Budget now.”

3] Asked by Sam Coates of the Times if any of her policies were different to Labour, she came up with compulsory means-testing of people on incapacity benefit. Except - as I understand it - Labour is already (albeit slowly) going ahead with this.

4] For all the talk of Britain’s dreadful unemployment record, May doesn’t expect the jobless tally to fall under a Tory government. At least that’s what she seemed to say. “The government is predicting more than 2.8m unemployed in 2011, they are also predicting that unemployment is unlikely to return to pre-recession levels until 2016. That, there is the nature of the issue we’re dealing with - it is not going to be easy. ”

Sounds like expectation management to me. But it doesn’t fit easily with the criticism of Labour for letting unemployment rise in the first place (eg, “Britain faces losing yet another generation to worklessness unless urgent action is taken“).

5] May did signal that she will look at changes to housing benefit which took place a year ago, meaning that tenants instead of landlords currently get the money. Labour’s changes to housing benefit always seemed bizarre to me because they are likely to stop some property owners renting out buildings to people on benefits. May has no concrete plans to reverse the policy but said she was examining it.

Political pledges on value added tax tend to have a short shelf life. The strong Tory denials on Sunday of a reported “plan” to raise VAT to 20 per cent are no doubt true. But, with the public finances in such a dire state, the debate seems eerily reminiscent of a legendary Geoffrey Howe dodge.

In the run up to the 1979 election, Labour were obsessed with the Tories planning to double VAT. Howe and Thatcher dismissed it as a smear. Howe was pretty explicit: “We have absolutely no intention of doubling VAT.” The Daily Mail was so convinced, it included the “double VAT” charge in a splash on “Labour’s dirty dozen lies”, just days before the campaign concluded.

The trouble was that the Tories had already agreed a “massive” hike in VAT a good year before winning the election. Sure, they didn’t want to double the rate. The secret plan, hatched at Howe’s house on the Fentiman Road, was completely different: to raise VAT from 8 to 15 per cent. Howe announced it in his first Budget. This story by my colleague Nick Timmins (written when he was at the Independent) runs through the whole saga.

Howe was unapologetic in his memoirs, describing the row as “part of the small change of election campaigning”.

“We had no difficulty denying it. For there was no prospect, on even the most gloomy of expectations, of our having to go beyond a rate of 15 per cent.

Some critics afterwards thought it pedantically misleading to rest our case on the fact that twice 8 per cent (the then basic rate) was 16 and not 15 per cent.

They also overlooked the fact that some goods (about 6 per cent of the basket) were already taxed at 12.5 per cent: the weighted average impact of the existing dual rate was 8.5 per cent. So our denial was more than technically correct.”