Tony Blair’s address to the Labour Party conference yesterday was perhaps the most unusual that he has delivered as Prime Minister. He deliberately eschewed classical rhetoric and calculated soundbites. Yet the whole was much stronger than the sum of the parts. This was a very coherent argument largely directed at the delegates in the hall rather than the wider television audience. It was the oratory of a man who understands that the end of his time in Downing Street is drawing ever closer, but who realises that he cannot afford to look as if that end is nigh.

As a consequence, this was a text that was philosophical, reflective, even whimsical. It was almost the outline draft of an autobiography. When the Prime Minister said: “The danger of government is fatigue; the benefit, experience”, he appeared to be referring as much to himself as his administration. When he admitted: “Every time I’ve introduced a reform in government, I wish in retrospect that I had gone further”, his sense of regret was unmistakable. When he mused: “Government is not a state of office but a state of mind”, Mr Blair captured the essence of his thinking.

This was a speech that was both low-key and high-value. It was, to borrow from one of his previous conference remarks, “unremittingly new Labour”. His core assertion was that globalisation posed an enormous challenge to the Centre Left which it had to respond to, rather than attempt to resist, or risk being swept into irrelevance. This was similar territory to that staked out by the Chancellor on Monday. But the Prime Minister raised the stakes He was uncompromising in his call for more dramatic reform of the public services and signalled his willingness to break decisively with traditional Labour instincts on law and order. His defence of the Anglo-American relationship and the continued British presence in Iraq was well made, even if not met with rapturous approval. En route, he indicated that he was prepared to court controversy in pursuit of pensions policy, civil nuclear power and road pricing.

As a prescription for how a modern, realistic, successful, centre-left political party has to adapt to a rapidly changing world it would be hard to beat his analysis. It was not a case that the leadership of the socialist and social democratic parties in France, Germany or Italy would have been bold or frank enough to make. His candour in reminding his comrades about their mistakes in the 1960s and their foolish opposition to council house sales was admirable. Even in his waning political years, Mr Blair is a class act. Many in his party may be pushing him towards the door marked “exit” but they will miss him more than they anticipate today once he has departed.

The issue, however, remains delivery. Having discovered that he was not radical enough at the start of his tenure, it is inevitably more difficult for the Prime Minister to mobilise his troops as he moves towards its end. In a shrewd insight yesterday he declared: “Today is not the era of the big State but a strategic one.” This is a sound and significant observation. It has been arrived at after eight years of persistent and often painful effort. It sums up what the future of the Centre Left has to be if it is to remain in electoral and intellectual business. The enduring strength of new Labour now depends, as Mr Blair knows, on whether Gordon Brown also recognises it.