The Sketch: The Chancellor revealed his indivisible core. It wasn't a pretty sight...

We have to admit the possibility that Gordon Brown is a great man. There it is. I'm trying the words out to see how they sound. The possibility must be there. He was enormously impressive in front of conference yesterday. A bit boring of course, but greatness involves a complex skein of qualities.

Power, force, cunning, passion, vision, dullness. What else does greatness require? Great office? He's got one of those. A dash of lunacy? That always helps in tight spots. Command? Oh yes, oh yes, when he commanded applause, everyone applauded. And some sense of intimacy with his audience. I don't know exactly what Mr Brown said, because I didn't go to his adviser Ed Balls' briefing directly afterwards. However Mr Brown stood in front of a packed hall and revealed his "indivisible core", as Tony Blair put it a couple of years ago. It didn't, oddly, cause spontaneous projectile vomiting.

When the Prime Minister does it, it's emotional exhibitionism; when Gordon Brown does it, it's reaching out to his constituency. This may be because he means what he says.

His speech reached a large conclusion, at the appropriate volume, imagining what conference delegates could say, a hundred years hence (for surely it will take that long), of their achievements.

"I was there, when, together, we." Child poverty. Meeting the target on increased pensioner dignity. Employing everyone. But the rolling refrain was: There. When, together.

There was an echo from the Book of Job (Where wast thou when the Lord created the firmament?), with Gordon Brown appearing in the role of the Almighty. As I say, a little lunacy helps.

Those that like this sort of thing loved this sort of thing. None of his rivals for the premiership could have come up with anything like it, certainly not Mr Blair. If there were any Tory with an ability to articulate the other party's philosophy at this level, the polls would look very different.

Having said that, class warriors will welcome the return of the class war.

They're not governing now for the whole of Britain. No, the purpose of government now is to promote Labour values (togetherness, principally).

These values include revulsion of Tories. The great, tribal therapy is back on public view. We will always put working people first, one said. Another referred to the callous, vicious, deliberate Tory policy to get rid of 100,000 jobs in Bradford. The Tories systematically destroyed our economy, another claimed, and found no dissent.

Another speaker, even in the act of excoriating the Tory record in manufacturing, told us that manufacturing jobs under Labour had been disappearing at the rate of 100,000 a year for four years. Twice as fast now, you might say, as under the baby-torturing, Satan-worshipping, prole-abusing cannibals that form the official Opposition.

Afterword: In the matter of devolution of powers to local government. Councillor Dame Sally Powell got up to demand more financial freedom for Hammersmith Council. The last time Hammersmith Council had financial freedom, they bet fantastic sums of ratepayers' money on an interest-rate swap and lost it all when the bet went the wrong way.

"We need to be in the excrement category," Sally Powell said. She meant "excellent". Or perhaps she didn't.