We are the servants of the people.” For a long time, those words have rung hollow, but now Mr Blair’s next line, which Mr Kennedy also quoted – warning that what the electorate gave, the electorate could take away – rings like an alarm bell. The Brent East by-election has broken the spell of New Labour’s electoral invincibility.As Mr Kennedy said, “More and more people have moved from disappointment to despair with this Government.” The war in Iraq acted as a catalyst; the Liberal Democrats are acting as a means of expression. The thrust of Mr Kennedy’s speech was serious and it was accurate. Particularly telling was his quotation from Tony Blair’s words to his new Labour MPs when they first assembled after the 1997 election “We are not the masters The people are the masters.

The notion that the Jubilee line on the London Underground, which passes through Brent East, be renamed the Victorious Line must be a strong contender for the worst wordplay in a party leader’s conference speech since Chaucer’s time.But no matter. His speech to the Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton, billed in advance by the Press Association as “barnstorming”, was in fact rather restrained. As if to try to rest the Chat-show Charlie soubriquet, he kept the flippancies to a minimum.
In part, this was accidental, as so many of his jokes were so bad they should not have been allowed out that early in the day. Lord Hutton, meanwhile, would be right to attend to those who had most responsibility for dealing with Dr Kelly.. The wider issues of the Iraq war are for the democratic process to deal with For Mr Blair, the damage has already been done. Lord Hutton and Mr Dingemans have taken a consistently dim view of the ministry’s failure to give Dr Kelly the support to which an employee is entitled.If that is the outcome, many will dismiss it as a whitewash But that would not necessarily be fair. That is serious, especially when Tony Blair and John Scarlett, his spy chief, denied it But it is not what Mr Gilligan originally reported.

But it was interesting to note, in the closing speech of James Dingemans QC, counsel for the inquiry, and in Lord Hutton’s own interventions in the other closing speeches, that the emphasis in both cases was towards the lower ranks.Andrew Gilligan, the BBC reporter who reported and misreported Dr Kelly’s views, came in for a particularly hard time. Yesterday’s closing speeches provide the chance to take stock of the damage and to assess the likely pressure points in Lord Hutton’s findings. Lord Hutton’s report, when it is published in November or early December, will be important, but the real impact of his inquiry has been in the daily drama since 11 August. Either it has since formulated some effective contingency plans, or has simply forgotten how to “do politics”, as they used to say about John Major’s Conservatives.. Now the Government is in a weaker position to stand up to the militants.