At the end of the Labour conference yesterday they handed out cards with the words of The Red Flag. Some of us can remember a time when you would no more have needed the song's lyrics than you would have to teach Happy Birthday at a children's party. There was a brief period during the Blair years when it was banned altogether, but once it had been safely defused, it returned - sung yesterday by a willowy soprano, so it sounded less like a call to the barricades than Proms in the Park.



We had just heard from the two leading women in the party. But first we had Jack Straw, the lord chancellor, describing his new costume: "embroidered gown, frock coat, breeches, buckled shoes and silk tights." Someone wolf-whistled. But, he said, he would dispense with the wig.

The present home secretary, the first woman in the job, adopted the demotic approach. She quoted the Sex Pistols, something earlier, stuffy, male home secretaries never did. She was planning to tackle alcohol-induced crime by "taking the licences away from dodgy premises". I didn't know "dodgy" was a legal term.

"What's the charge, officer?"


Drug users would be helped to "get their heads together". The authorities would seize criminals' "bling". At one point she even said "sumfink". This may be due to spending too long in police canteens.

The wind-up speech came from Harriet Harman. Just as her predecessor, John Prescott, once seemed to take credit for the absence of a hosepipe ban, so she praised the government through the disasters over which it has presided: "If the money market wobbles and you are worried about your savings, if torrential rain threatens your home, if foot and mouth threatens your farm, you want people who can sort it out ... you need Gordon Brown and his cabinet!"


"We are so, so proud of Gordon Brown," she concluded, a catch in her voice. And they didn't even link arms for The Red Flag.