Blair's bad news day

BBC News Online political correspondent Nick Assinder offers his view on events at the Labour conference in Blackpool.

Tuesday is most definitely Blair day.

There will be debates in the morning on the "Quality of Life" led by Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett and the welfare state, led by work and pensions secretary Andrew Smith.

In the afternoon, Alistair Darling will lead the debate on transport.

But before him, just after lunch will be the star turn - the prime minister himself delivering what most agree is his most important conference speech to date.

Tony Blair always planned to ensure all the bad news came on one day. And he succeeded, possibly beyond his wildest dreams.

He had to witness the excruciating sight of Paul Boateng's "defence" of PFI, which was so bad some of the delegates - when not booing him - wondered if he was a union stooge.

He suffered only his second defeat since becoming leader when the conference demanded an inquiry into his key policy on the public services.

And he heard a string of speakers demanding no war on Iraq without full UN and Commons backing or, worse, under any circumstances.

If all that wasn't enough, he also had to sit and smile as Chancellor Gordon Brown did his usual trick of making his keynote speech sound like the performance of a party leader.

None of it will have much of an effect on the conduct of the government's business. That was made clear to the delegates well before they arrived in Blackpool - sunny for once, by the way.

And it did mean that there will not be embarrassing scenes for the leadership on a daily basis.

But it was still a pretty bruising experience and, who knows, the conference may still have something up its sleeve for later.

David Blunkett told of a constituent who complained to his MP that the dentist had put a radio into his hollow tooth and now MI5 and MI6 were bugging him.

He complained that, when he wrote to the authorities about the abuse, he was told he needed to get a licence.

It was always likely that Gordon Brown would have one of his now traditional good conference days.

He always puts in an appealing performance with a mixture of modernisation and old Labour rhetoric. And he did it again.

He may not have won the PFI vote, but he won the hearts of the conference and succeeded in reminding them again, he hopes, what a good leader he would make.

Not so much a bad day as a bad week for the prime minister - with the party determined to give him at least one black eye.

Also, his face was a picture when Gordon was making his latest leadership - sorry, conference - speech.

"You don't pay the bill for your semi-detached on your Barclaycard. It's the same for schools and hospitals" - Louisa Wass, a delegate from Bolsover, opposes private-public partnerships.

A potential problem for New Labour, a party which relies so much on mobile communication.

Delegates and party staff filling the bars in the heavily guarded Imperial Hotel - Labour's HQ for conference week - found on Sunday night that it was virtually impossible to get a good reception on their mobiles.

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Former transport secretary Stephen Byers - remember him? - was out and about in Blackpool on the first night of conference, dining with a large group of delegates at the town's Il Corsaro restaurant.

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Also out on the town was former Welsh Secretary Ron "Walk on the Wild Side" Davies, continuing his process of rehabilitation. He hopes.

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Delegates attempting to take their cups of coffee into the Winter Gardens are being stopped by security.

"Sorry sir, no hot drinks allowed. There was an incident last year."

Another incident with a large cappuccino with an extra shot of coffee was looming before tempers cooled..

What about some rotten fruit then.

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