Leading article: Mr Brown's manifesto for an undeclared election

There was never the slightest chance that Gordon Brown would use his party conference speech to do what so many rank-and-file delegates and the massed ranks of the media were willing him to do: declare a snap general election. Amid all the pressure for clarity, it was in his own interests to keep David Cameron and the Opposition guessing as long as possible. And keep them (and us) guessing he did.

This was a multi-purpose speech, workmanlike in tone, more than competently delivered and with just enough specifics to double as an election manifesto, should the need arise. And if not, well, the other message – no less appropriate to yesterday's task – came across loud and clear: the seductive brilliance of Tony Blair may no longer reside at Number 10, but the party and the country can rely on serious-minded, dependable Gordon Brown to work hard for the equally hard-working people of Britain.

Without Mr Blair, the atmosphere was different, too. Mr Brown did not need to court the party, which received him as one of its own. Mr Brown reflected back the approval, regaling his audience with a string of mostly uncontroversial policy proposals, some of them clearly designed to court another audience – wavering Conservatives. Not mentioning either David Cameron or the Conservatives by name (while making subtle digs at their policies) was a nice prime ministerial touch that left Mr Brown occupying the political high ground.

The personal passages – the values imbibed as a "son of the manse", the local school he attended that is hard by his constituency headquarters, the eye injury that left him with lifelong gratitude for the NHS – are by now familiar components of a Gordon Brown speech. There may come a time when they start to lose their appeal through over-use, but that time is not yet. Mr Brown has a heart-warming story to tell, and it is a story that fits well with Labour priorities – new and old.

On substance, there was much to welcome, if little new, in the policy stall the Prime Minister set out. The need to foster aspiration and help each and every individual recognise and use his talent should be fruitful territory for a Labour Prime Minister, and Mr Brown articulated it as well as any. Greater provision of grants for education, and the tailoring of public services more to personal needs are a canny continuation of the "choice" agenda by other, more Labour-friendly, means.

The proposed extension of paid maternity leave to nine months, statutory holiday rights, and more checks on compliance with the minimum wage may have been nods in the direction of the trade unions, but are none the worse for that. Mr Brown's hint that the statutory target for cutting carbon emissions could be increased was also positive. On the negative side, there was the shameful way in which Mr Brown slid over the Iraq war and repeated the Blair trick of eliding it with Afghanistan, as though the two operations were equivalent.

We have known, not least from his years as Chancellor, that Mr Brown is a man more at home with the details than with the big picture. Was it only coincidence that the line he seemed to deliver least convincingly yesterday was the one about how he saw himself as a "conviction politician"?

From an electoral point of view, however, it is the question marks Mr Brown left yesterday that could prove the most critical. One is how the details fit together. The other is the yawning gap between his objectives and where we are now. How does he propose to get from here to there – on clean hospitals, or social mobility, for instance – when for the past decade things have moved in the opposite direction? If the speech was a draft manifesto, this is the chapter that was missing.