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Lashings of ubuntu at Bill's big love-in

Bill Clinton reached out to the Labour party yesterday, reached out and fondled it, told it how much he loved it. "I have never seen one man simultaneously flirt with 3,000 people," a minister said on her way out.

It felt like being drowned in a gigantic sundae, slathered with ice cream, hot chocolate sauce and plenty of fudge. He told them they were fabulous, wonderful, adorable, and of course he would phone in the morning.

"Ah'm glad to be back here, ah lahk this Labour party conference," he began. Clinton can get away with saying "ah" for "I", unlike Blair who sounds posey. "The victory you won last year was good for the UK but also for the world as a whole," he told them. Mmm, raspberry sauce!

"Your prime minister, your government, your party have all been stunning successes," he went on. I first saw Clinton speak at the Democratic convention in 1988 and he was terrible. Now he is brilliant. His arms reach out as if he would like to stroke everybody in the audience, tenderly and repeatedly. You might be sitting 50ft back but he still seems to be making personal eye contact with you.

He uses long pauses, as if searching for precisely the right compliment for the gorgeous, quivering party in front of him. "I say to all of you. Well done. You should be happy. And you should be proud." Yummy, toasted almonds!

The conference, so to speak, crossed and re-crossed its legs. He warned them of the terrible dangers that would occur if they ever lost power.

"If you vote another crowd in, surely to goodness they would keep everything you did right," he said. Long pause as the irony sunk in. "Yeah," he said, sorrowfully, and as one they felt his pain. He felt their pain. He wanted to kiss them all better.

He thanked everyone. He thanked Tony Blair, he thanked Cherie and the children. He thanked Gordon Brown for his "brilliant economic leadership". He thanked the party for giving them the chance to serve.

The gist was that their genius had changed the world, and it was all thanks to the Labour party conference! "You are the change agents in this great nation. You have been and you will be". Slurp! Delicious sprinkles, bits of banana! They applauded wildly his applause for them.

Tony Blair was "proud, but humble". Yes, we might have added, and brilliant but useless, truthful but mendacious, sane but crazed. He had been greeted with "gratitude, devotion and love." I tried to breathe, but felt I was gagging on whipped cream.

Then we heard about Aids, and global warming, and the good work his newest, dearest friends would be doing against both. "Be of good cheer! Take a deep breath! Be proud of what you have done, and keep in the future business!"

He finished with an African word he had learned. It was ubuntu. He didn't immediately tell us what it was. It sounded like one of those amalgamated unions you find in the modern TUC: the United Beaders, Upholsterers, Needleworkers, etc.

Or possibly it was a reference to the joke about the new district commissioner who is greeted everywhere he goes with cries of, say, "Ubuntu!" This enthusiasm cheers him greatly, until he reaches a cattle compound where his guide says, "mind you don't step in that ubuntu."

It turns out to mean "I am, because you are." No, I haven't a clue either. But the speech was a mighty success, compared, say, to Alan Johnson, who spoke in the afternoon and who was worthy but pedestrian. In a party that is, by now, charisma-crazed, he did his leadership chances no good at all. He lacks the magic ubuntu factor. And I'll bet they never get him to address the Democratic national convention.

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