There are few alternatives for a governing party at the last conference before the election. Behind in the opinion polls, they have to galvanise their activists, support their leader and prepare for a tilt at victory. Otherwise, the accusations of defeatism will haunt their candidacies after Brown falls on his sword.
This was the motivation behind the orchestrated shelling of the mainstream newspapers with a Labour blitz on why going over the top is the latest strategy. However, the problem for Labour is that their leader remains wedded to an unconvincing score.
If you listen to Brown, he is adamant about his role in the financial crisis. Whilst "saving the world" was a slip of the tongue at PMQs months back, it has now become part of his armour and self-belief. We have returned to the monologue of last auturm where Brown is not only the saviour of the world but the architect of Britain's rescue:
"I
have led the way around the world, spent night and day persuading my
colleagues what is necessary."
This is bolstered by a sense of infallibility and a contempt for his opponents. Every choice was "right" and this is juxtaposed with the "slogans" of the opposition. For if they were thinking about the crisis, they would see that Brown was correct and support him in everything he did. (Why then would we need an official Opposition?)
The interview also brings us a useful window onto Brown's thinking about the expenses crisis. The anger, the disillusionment, tha plague upon all your houses is dissipated. Instead, we have an anodyne observation: that the electorate has "suspended judgement".
This is Brown's greatest error: that he was too convinced of his own intellectual rigor and infallibility, too unwilling to listen to the message that his employers kept telling him. He is truly the first Presbyterian Pope.