100 days ... and the going gets softer

The Wrong Correspondent... Richard Edmondson, Racing Correspondent, in the first of a series in which specialist reporters venture outside their normal field, watches Labour's 100 days press conference

As I entered Millbank Tower yesterday, it occurred to me how proud my father would have been to be there.

He was a lifelong socialist, and even the last time I saw him he was championing the cause, lamenting how employers had curtailed his career. Sadly, Dad is no longer with us. He spends two months each summer at his house in the south of France.

Labour's first 100-day celebrations therefore passed him by, but there may be other opportunities. If the party makes this report a consistent event, and manage to stay in power for as long as the Conservatives, there will be about another 65 self-aggrandising festivals.

Yesterday's launch was notable for the characters absent rather than those on hand. Tony is in Tuscany, but it seems Robin Cook, Lord Simon and Andrew Slaughter, the beaten Uxbridge candidate, have been sent to Coventry. Labour's march to a century seemed to be going well until, like a nervous batsman, they got the jitters in the 90s.

Robin's absence was a personal blow. My racing colleague does the selections for the Glasgow Herald, and there has been much discussion of the consistency of his tipping this week.

Exactly 190 years ago, a horse called "Election" won the Derby, and there have been interesting Blue Riband winners since. Tony Blair will know that Quest For Fame was successful in 1990, while Peter Mandelson's favourite is doubtless Dr Devious two years later.

There was promise of a further racing connection yesterday with the appearance of the former steward, John Prescott. He, though, was not affiliated to the Jockey Club; rather to the Cunard line.

The Deputy Prime Minister's arrival was prefaced by sombre classical music - the party has gone from D.Ream to D.Reary - and a film montage of public supporters, including that great voluble political animal, the London cabbie.

After this Pearl & Dean episode came the Torvill and Dean partnership of the tall chap (Mandelson) and his dumpy confederate (Prescott). On a stage as clean and flimsy as an Ikea showroom, John was straight into his press release, faltering only when he inexplicably put the recent showers down to his "Riverdance". Mandelson didn't falter, nor would he if you lit matches under his feet. No wonder England are struggling when their best spinner is ignored.

In spite of the trident hidden in his lapel pocket and the long, pointed tail tucked into his trousers, Mandelson's charcoal suit seemed to be hanging rather well.

The minister without portfolio dislikes the media's attempt to demonise him as the arch manipulator, yet somehow he had attracted more than 10 camera crews to observe the simple act of him reading a great trumpeting of the party.

Questions were taken and questioners were humiliated, and by the end, the Fourth Estate was so concussed there was not even mention of the previous day's fourth interest rate rise since Labour took office.

Our speakers left in a red ministerial Jaguar with Prescott on the passenger side and Mandelson in the back. Who knows which of them has been in the driving seat while Tony Blair was away.