SO IN THE END it wasn’t Brown versus Blair. It wasn’t even Gordon versus Cherie, or Ed and Damian versus Alastair and Peter. It was the journalists against the Labour Party or, more precisely, media sensationalism against dull truth.

It was always likely that this week’s Labour Party conference would present a spectacular show of unity; that both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown would dedicate key sections of their speeches to paeans of praise for one another; that the only real story of the week would be reconciliation.

And this, indeed, was what happened. The only real “story” I heard, whether on or off the record, even from the most partisan sources was about unity: that the feud between Mr Blair and Mr Brown was essentially over and that, after a largely symbolic leadership contest, the party would back the overwhelming winner, Mr Brown. Call me naive, but this seems to me a full and accurate description of all the important events in Manchester this week — and of the outlook for British politics in the coming months as the transition from Mr Blair to Mr Brown continues its inevitable and stately progress.

In saying this, I know that I am breaking ranks with my journalistic colleagues, who will justly dismiss me as “outside the loop”, unversed in the lobby system, lacking in deep contacts or simply uninformed. However, I feel confident that I have got the real story, while most of the headlines have missed it: the Brown-Blair feud is effectively over, the Labour Party has secured the “stable and orderly transition” it longed for, and the “nervous breakdown” of three weeks ago was actually a healthy moment of catharsis that has improved Labour’s chances of staying in power.

What is my evidence? The strongest evidence of unity was ironically, the Cherie Blair “that’s a lie” incident. Manchester this week was crawling with resourceful and aggressive political journalists who left no stone unturned to find some new casus belli with which to reignite the Blair-Brown war. So what did all these media bloodhounds bring home? An almost inaudible comment, supposedly muttered under her breath by the Prime Minister’s wife, who is not even a politician, and overheard not by some eminent BBC, Sun or Guardian pundit, but by a US wire-service reporter on her way to the loo. If this was the strongest “Blair-Brown feud” story that the best and brightest of British political journalism could come up with, then surely the Labourites have beaten their swords into ploughshares and the ultra-Brownites can now lie down with the über-Blairites. The fact is that, apart from that one eavesdropped remark, the really extraordinary story from Manchester was the absence of a single aggressive statement from either the Blair or Brown camp against the other.

This was hilariously attested by the growing desperation of TV journalists who could find no “talking heads” to reopen the Blair-Brown rift. One news anchor tried to twist an interview by Peter Mandelson into an attack on Mr Brown, only to be corrected on air by his own political editor: far from attacking the Chancellor, Mr Mandelson was actually backing him for leader, a behavioural aberration that could only be explained, according to the TV discussion, by the EU Commissioner’s desperate hopes of reappointment by the new prime minister.

Such cynicism may well be justified but there are two other reasons for the unprecedented unity that was the real “story” of the Labour conference. The first is that Labour looked into the abyss and has drawn back. The second is that the leadership question has now been effectively settled to everyone’s satisfaction, if not quite in the way expected. The near-coup was, of course, a horrible experience for both Mr Blair and Mr Brown, but looking back with a few weeks’ hindsight, everyone has emerged with more or less the result they wanted. Mr Brown got the bankable guarantee that he always demanded about a vacancy at No 10 within a fixed timeframe. Mr Blair has won the freedom to fine-tune the timing of his departure and a chance to restore his rapport with the public. Indeed, if the Prime Minister can keep up the magnificent form he showed on Tuesday, he could even rekindle his love affair with the voters.

Liberated from all the infighting and the cares of indefinite office, Mr Blair was clearly enjoying himself and his pleasure was infectious. And unlike Margaret Thatcher, who famously boasted that she was “enjoying this” in her last parliamentary appearance, Mr Blair has months of liberty ahead. If he can “take apart” David Cameron and manage an orderly transition of power, he could even disprove Enoch Powell’s famous curse that “all great political careers end in failure”.

Since Mr Brown cannot hope to match the charm and charisma so spectacularly displayed by Mr Blair this week, does this mean Labour is doomed? The answer is no. One has only to look back through history, or around the world today, to see that charm and charisma bear very little relation to political success. Thatcher, Heath and Nixon were far from charming; Attlee, Wilson and Carter were hardly charismatic. George W. Bush is neither. But this didn’t stop them from winning.

The real problem for Labour in the post-Blair era is a lack of ideas. This ideas deficit, however, is equally profound on the Tory side. In fact the whole British Establishment — not just Labour and Tories, but also the Liberals and most of the media — are in denial about the real challenges for the country in the decade ahead. The toughest of these challenges are not globalisation, climate change and security, since everyone knows what to do about them, even if they are not doing it. The real challenges are in health, education and foreign policy. The cost of health and education will rise so rapidly in the decades ahead that no government will be able to finance them adequately through taxes. US foreign policy is now so dangerous that automatic support for Washington can no longer command public acceptance. Yet discussion of serious reforms in health, education or foreign policy are effectively taboo.

As Tony Blair leaves public life, he deserves much of the praise he enjoyed this week. Britain is more prosperous, more stable, more contented and more respected internationally than it was ten years ago. But as Mr Blair himself admitted, the problems he bequeaths to his successor are much bigger than the ones he has solved. No wonder Mr Blair feels so much freer, and looks so much happier, than he did a few weeks ago.

Times Recommends

• Darling won't pay for Brown give-away
• Believe it or not, Big Brother is your friend
• E-mails were quoted out of context