Brown’s big speech

By Paul Richards

2.00pm The conference hall is filling fast. The set is blood-red. So are many of the delegates’ eyes, after three late nights. Some kind of strange colour-coded ticketing system is in operation, to guide people to their seats. Telegenic at the front, uglies to the rear. David Miliband chats to Jack Straw. Peter Hain and Sean Woodward sit side by side, not talking. There’s a mood of expectation and anxiety.

2.08pm Red balloons have escaped; delegates are bouncing them to one another.

2.15pm Neil and Glenys Kinnock are sitting next to Eddie Izzard, having a right old laugh by the look of it…

2.25pm There’s a video of uplifting images – Keir Hardie, the NHS, Nelson Mandela, John Smith, the Paralympics, JK Rowling, Gordon and Sarah

2.26pm Sarah Brown comes out to ecstatic applause. ‘Each day I’m thanking he’s the one choosing the policies, making the calls.’

2.31pm Another video. Gordon the Movie. Moving On Up is the soundtrack. Bono. Kofi Annan. Kevin Rudd. June Sarpong.

2.35pm Sarah introduces ‘my hero’ Gordon Brown

2.35pm It is fighters, believers who change the world. The word ‘fight’ appears, and I’m guessing not for the last time.

2.36pm A long list of Labour achievements, from civil partnerships to international aid. The first round of applause.

2.37pm A thank you to Harriet Harman, and mention of her equality bill, and her bid to ensure no place for the BNP

2.38pm Name check for Alistair Darling. The first joke: I’d say you are the best chancellor we’ve ever had, but the press would report ‘Brown snubs Brown’. Good one-liner about Peter Mandelson and the ‘special relationship’.

2.40pm Onto the serious stuff about choice, economics, the recession.

2.41pm ‘Not one British saver has lost a single penny’

2.42pm ‘Half a million jobs saved.’

2.43pm Leading the G20 to a global deal to save 15 million jobs

2.44pmThe attack on the Conservatives starts – making the wrong choices on Northern Rock, mortgages, working with Europe – consistently wrong all the time. Test of a government – quality of its marketing? I say quality of its judgement. He fails to mention Cameron by name – yet.

2.45pm Conservatives would return us to the cardboard cities of the 1980s. We say ‘never again’

2.46pm Labour is the party of enterprise. The Conservatives would walk away.

2.47pm What failed was the right-wing fundamentalism, and free markets. Brown attacks bankers. He tells a story about a banker lying to him about the scale of his bank’s debts. Who was it? We should know.

2.50pm Effort merit and hard work. Self-improvement. Section on values – the soul of our party and the mission of our government. Talk of an ordinary family in an ordinary town, of not being able to afford school fees. A masked attack on Cameron’s privileged background.

2.51pm Direct attack on Hannan’s view of the NHS as a sixty year mistake.

2.52pmThe government will not pass by the other side. First Biblical reference.

2.53pm Markets need morals. Announces the bankers’ bonus bill. Red meat for the Labour delegates

2.54pmThe banks will pay back the British people

2.55pm A stanza on ‘change’: one of the key themes. The first Labour Government of the new global age

2.56pm A new national investment corporation is announced (shades of Harold Wilson). Post Offices will do banking services

2.56pm More green jobs. Climate change deal at Copenhagen.

2.57pm Education, unlocking talents, social mobility. We will invest more in our schools.

2.58pm A good local school no matter where you live. A bold claim, especially in the cities.

2.58pm Announces ten thousand skilled internships, and a project for green jobs with the Eden Project

2.59pm He’s called us ‘friends’ and says he needs to speak ‘bluntly’. Oh dear, what’s coming?

3.00pm The Tories would cut front-line services. Labour will not. More Tory attack – inheritance tax. Cuts because they want to, not have to.

3.00pm More achievements: EMAs for all over the next five years.

3.01pm Every patient given the right to see a GP in the evening or weekend.

3.02pm We will restore the pensions link for all state pensioners. The national minimum wage to increase every year. The national minimum wage was the dream of Neil Kinnock, with us today and John Smith, not here today. Names Tony Blair, ‘and we thank him today’

3.03pm Free childcare for parents of two year-olds

3.04pm Section on teen pregnancies. Supervised homes for 16 and 17 year olds who are pregnant. What? Sounds like a return to Victorian values

3.05pm A section on morality and rights & responsibilities. Here comes the anti-social behaviour stuff that’s been trailed in the papers. Family Intervention Projects are ‘tough love’. Mentions scheme in Dundee.

3.07pm ASBOs for parents whose kids breach their ASBOs. Rows back on all-night drinking, with powers for councils to ban 24-hour drinking. Pubs and clubs to pay for the clean-ups caused by binge drinking.

3.09pm Police stuff. They’ll come round in 24 hours. Action squads cracking down on public spaces to make them safe.

3.10pm Immigration – tightening our points system.

3.11pm Basically he’s just scrapped ID cards.

3.12pm Stumbles over word ‘contribution’

3.12pm Attacks SNP. Mentions Northern Ireland. Name-checks Tony Blair for the second time.

3.13pm Afghanistan. Praises the armed services ‘finest in the world’. Big applause. Some delegates on their feet, standing ovation. Now everyone’s standing and clapping.

3.14pm Mentions Obama. Links fight in Afghanistan to terrorism in the UK. Peace for Israel and Palestine. End to nuclear proliferation, end to the arms race. Iran: join the international community or face isolation. Bet the Iranians are bricking it now…

3.15pm International aid.

3.16pm More on the NHS. ‘this summer didn’t show them: we love the NHS’.

3.16pm Diana wrote to the PM, saying her life had been saved by early diagnosis for breast cancer.

3.17pm You are saving lives every day, you should be very very proud. ‘If you change one life, you change the world.’ I think that’s a quote

3.18pm ore on faster cancer care: our ambition is to beat cancer in this generation.

3.19pm Brown tells us he and Sarah worked this summer in a hospice in their home.

3.20pm Announcement on social care for all, in the manifesto. A new national care service for Britain.

3.21pm A section on help for people with dementia and Alzheimer’s. Free personal care pledged.

3.22pm Another mention of the ‘mainstream majority’.

3.23pm Politics needs morals. Says Labour MPs are there to serve the public interest. There are some who let the public down. Announces a new system of ‘recall’ for MPs – through local petitions.

3.24pm Calls for Alternative Voting system. Referendum in the manifesto, in the next parliament, on AV. Better late than never…

3.25pm Abolition the hereditary principle for the House of Lords, and make it democratic for the first time.

3.26pm More attack on the Tories.

3.27pm The election is not about my future. It is about the future of your job, etc.

3.27pm Back to the Tories: inheritance tax, NHS, crime, DNA evidence, Europe.

3.28pm ‘How can you deliver change when you haven’t changed your own party.’

3.30pm Back to the NHS. This speech is jumping all over place. Have his notes got jumbled up?

3.31pm No obstacle is so great it can stop the onward march of fairness and progress

3.32pm A quotation: ‘dream big dreams and watch our country soar’

3.33pm ‘We love this country.’

3.34pm ‘Never stop believing…now is not the time to give in it is time to stand to fight to win and to serve.’

Rousing applause, standing ovation. Sarah joins him on the stage.