Quite apart from the subject of Iraq, Tony Blair's conference speech (see below) incoporated some apparently glancing remarks about social change which tell you a lot about where he's coming from -- and which should strike a chill in anyone who understands the terrifying implications of political correctness. This is what he said:

'And remember when to be in favour of gay rights was to be a loony leftie, race relations was political correctness, and Red Ken frightened people even as brave as your own leadership? Now the parties compete for the gay vote, unite against the BNP and Ken has led and won the debate on congestion charging and community policing. So many things that used to divide our country bitterly, now unite it in healthy consensus.'

What this passage indicates to me is that here is a man who does not understand the difference between tolerance and totalitarianism. Respecting the dignity and privacy of homosexuals is a mark of a civilised and liberal society. Gloating about the grip of the 'gay rights' agenda, which avowedly aims to destroy sexual and social norms and is acting as the spearhead of a movement to destabilise family life while viciously suppressing, through intimidation and character assassination, any attempt to warn of the harm this may do -- the agenda that this Labour government has ruthlessly and obsessively embraced since 1997 -- reveals the purportedly 'right-wing', 'Tory' Tony to be a different political animal altogether.

Then look at the reference to race. The implication that to have been against neo-fascism was ever sneered at as 'politically correct' is as disgusting as it is fundamentally confused. People whose innate decency motivates them to oppose the BNP and similar groups may well be motivated by exactly the same decent impulse to expose and oppose the many falsehoods and tyrannies of the 'multicultural' fallacy, or the way in which the smear of 'racism' or 'institutional racism' is used to perpetrate gross injustice. But instead of opposing such neo-Stalinism and defending liberal values, Blair actually praised that most self-destructive oxymoron, a 'multicultural society' -- and even promised a new law to outlaw religious discrimination, a sop to those Muslims who want to criminalise anyone who dares tell the truth about Islamic terrorism.

And as for a 'consensus' supporting Ken Livingstone, presumably Blair has failed to spot what the Guardian has called 'an unprecedented coalition, encompassing Sikhs, Hindus, Jews, gays and lesbians, and the National Union of Students' protesting at the platform Livingstone gave to the Jew-hating, gay-bashing, terror-supporting Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

People assume that, because he espouses the market in contrast to Gordon Brown's command economy tendencies, Blair is a conservative. Not so. The key to Blair's position is the importance he attaches to being a 'radical'. This is because of his great weakness -- his knowledge that he is not a child of the Labour movement, and therefore vulnerable to the charge that he is really a Tory in drag. So without any deep roots in a radical philosophy, he has reached down from the peg a ready-made suit of radical clothes -- which happens to be the post-modern, politically correct victim culture. Blair is therefore the dupe of a viciously anti-western agenda whose goal is the destabilisation of western society. The ultimate irony, of course, is that the Tories still can't see that this is their greatest weapon against Blairism -- and instead are trying to turn themselves into politically correct clones, too.