The Prime Minister must deliver a persuasive message at Blackpool

His strength as a national leader is that he isn't culturally of the Labour Party; this could become a weakness

How appropriate that it should be Blackpool, scene of so much party bloodletting in the past, and the place to which New Labour never wanted to return. For suddenly it seemed as if the Labour conference we used to know and love was back: rows and split votes in the national executive, unremitted composites, union leaders overturned by their delegations, card votes, the scent of conference defeat in the leadership's nostrils. Some of the theatre that has preceded Tony Blair's march to the rostrum this afternoon would hardly have been out of place in the Wilson or Callaghan years.

On one level, of course, this is wholly illusory. Whatever yesterday's shouts and murmurs, Labour and its leader drive all before it in a way those administrations could never have dreamt of doing. This Government dominates the electoral landscape as no other, post-war, has done. Even the tensions within the Cabinet, less ideological and much more personal than in the 1970s but just as real, are submerged by the inescapable fact of Labour's stubborn poll lead.

Consider for a moment the euro, still a source of tension between Prime Minister and Chancellor, as was only too evident yesterday. EMU entry, until 9/11 the great issue for this Parliament and still one of them, would have been the dominant topic of this conference, were it not for the shadow of Iraq. "Will they, won't they?" would have been the only question worth asking. But what's more remarkable is not the single currency's temporary eclipse by the prospect of war, but the fact that the Government might even be able to hold a referendum as late as 2004, if not ideally, at least with impunity. The rules of electoral politics used to say that you couldn't risk such a great enterprise after mid-term. But now the rules have been rewritten, thanks to an impotent Tory opposition, sunk in the scandals of its past. Assuming no disaster in Iraq – a big assumption – virtually any timing seems possible.

In such circumstances, a conference vote against the private finance initiative (PFI) is hardly a catastrophe. While most unions voted against the Government, most local parties voted with it. Gordon Brown was effortlessly blunt yesterday in a classic conference speech (which said almost nothing about global economic uncertainties but succeeded magnificently in touching every Labour nerve-end) in saying that the Government could simply not have built so many schools and hospitals without it. And most local parties took his message to heart. There is an economic argument to be had about the PFI's long-term value – and costs. But this was a call promoted by vested trade union interests and secured with trade union block votes, and it will be magisterially ignored by a Government still at the peak of its powers.

On another level, however, some of the echoes of old-style conference theatre do symbolise something contemporary: a stretching, whether temporary or not, of the elastic binding party to leader. Even on the PFI, the scale of the defeat suggests an almost wilful ingratitude on the part of the unions for the scale of public spending described so eloquently by the Chancellor yesterday. Nowhere is the elastic more stretched than on Iraq. Yesterday's pre-emptive withdrawal of the NEC statement on Iraq defending government strategy was a real defeat. Did the party chairman Charles Clarke not – rightly – suggest before yesterday's debate that concern over Iraq was much more significant than that over the PFI because it reflected real anxiety among the wider public? In their own way, yesterday's conference dramas may underline some lessons for the still evolving relationship between party and leader.

Partly this is a matter of organisation, compounded by a worryingly dwindling party membership. One of the most attractive aspects of Blair as a democratic leader is his shining belief in the powers of argument, conducted more often through the press than in the party. So far his stunning record as the most electorally successful party leader of the century has led him to eschew many of the other instruments of influence deployed by most of his predecessors.

He doesn't regularly consult an inner group of cabinet members, leaving the impression that all the big decisions are taken within a tight central group. There is no real Blairite organisation as there was, say, a Gaitskellite one. Ministers argue with justice that Blair has been more assiduous than either Neil Kinnock or John Smith in holding meetings with activists; but then the bond between leader and party is less instinctive than it was, more in need of continual maintenance. In a way, Blair's rejection of this kind of factionalism is admirable. And up to now it hasn't been necessary. But just occasionally it can generate the image of a brilliant but lonely acrobat on a high wire without a safety net.

But partly it's a matter of the kind of dialogue Blair has with his own party. His strength as national leader is precisely that he isn't culturally of the Labour Party in the way his predecessors were. It isn't inconceivable that in adverse conditions this could become a weakness.

This may not happen, even over Iraq, on which the Prime Minister is said to be confident that a UN Security Council ultimatum to Saddam will be achieved. But the party's real respect for Blair – based as much as anything on his electoral success – hasn't yet been fully tested in circumstances in which the leader is at odds with a majority of his party on a great issue of the day. It knows that Labour would never have won so big in 1997 and 2001 without Tony Blair – but also that Mr Blair would not have become Prime Minister without the Labour Party.

There was plenty of comforting old-time religion in Mr Brown's speech yesterday. And while his lightly coded warning to Alan Milburn, the Secretary of State for Health, over his Blair-backed plans for independent foundation hospitals reflects legitimate Treasury concerns over uncontrolled borrowing, there may also have been a hint of future leadership rivalry. Both Mr Brown and his potential rivals grossly underestimate the overwhelming probability that the Chancellor will succeed to the leadership when the moment comes.

But Mr Brown did succeed in explaining to conference delegates that there was a higher purpose to the modern means, including use of the private sector, of delivering better public services. It's hard to imagine Mr Blair using the same language when he delivers his passionate defence of public-service reform and change today. It would be odd if he did. But he does also need to set out out a vision of universal provision of public services – with the poor at least as much the beneficiaries as the middle classes. And to dispel the impression that he thinks that the private sector has all the answers or that the means are as important as the ends. It's common for most leaders' speeches, Blair's included, to be delivered to the public outside. Today he needs to have a message for the audience in the Winter Gardens as well.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk