Mr Blair might say that it was the audience that was just plain wrong. It was like watching a family at the end of a long, hard feud. For years, these two have put up with one another. Mr Blair has trotted to this conference and they have been polite because he kept getting elected.

But now they don’t care. Yesterday they were not willing to fake that friendly thing for even one more hour. The air was thick with repressed hostilities. It began with a walk-out which was actually more of a mince-out. As the Prime Minister snuck into his seat, about 15 of the brothers stood up and held up signs that said: “Time to Go”. The PM peered at them, possibly wondering why they hadn’t been arrested under the Terrorism Act.

The men then walked gingerly out of the hall. There was no visible anger. They may have been leaving in fury or they may have been going to have a cup of tea. It was hard to tell. Mr Blair reacted like an exasperated father.

“Those people hostile to a Labour Government and everything we have tried to achieve, you are doing precisly what they want. Not very sensible,” he scolded. I’m only surprised he didn’t threaten to stop their pocket money if they didn’t come back right this minute.

In his speech Mr Blair played both good cop and bad cop. First he gushed like some sort of broken water main about how fabulous they all were. No one clapped. Then he slobbered all over the Labour agenda. No one clapped. Finally, he emitted a geyser of praise about democracy in Iraq and spoke warmly of George W. Bush.

That was pure madness for this crowd. “Rubbish!” someone shouted.

About 30 people held up “Troops Out” signs. Mr Blair peered at them, looking as if he had just found something unpleasant on the bottom of his shoe. “You can hold up your signs,” he noted — somewhat bizarrely since they were indeed doing exactly that. There were a few boos. He spread his arms out and shouted: “It’s getting warmer up here!” This seemed very strange behaviour and I was worried that he might start to do a striptease or something.

Mr Blair does not like being heckled (he needs to work on that if the Legacy Tour is ever going to succeed). He has an infinite belief in his ability to talk anyone round and that may have been the idea behind his unusual question-andanswer session yesterday. It didn’t work. All the questions were hostile and received applause. All his answers were met in stony silence.

So, at the very end, Mr Blair did what all great actors must do when the material isn’t working. He threw away the script. He began to stride to and fro in that manly way that he has. He mused over what he had learned as Prime Minister. He told the brothers and sisters a few “brutal truths” about political life and death.

His voice was sonorous now and, for the first time, he seemed truly confident. It was almost like he was making his own leaving do speech. He told us about how being prime minister meant that you had to take tough decisions and how they had been very, very hard to take. But it was worth it because you changed people’s lives for the better.

At this point, I thought that he might actually start to sing My Way. It was his best moment of the day and it was pure karaoke. There is hope for the Legacy Tour yet.

TUC AGENDA

WEDNESDAY

9.30am Speech by Margaret Beckett, Foreign Secretary, followed by international debate including globalisation and Trident

2.15pm Debates on Middle East; industrial policy; quality of work; transport; media

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