FOR ALL the debate that will take place at the Labour Party's crucial pre-election conference at Blackpool this week, there is really only one item on the agenda - winning power.

And though New Labour and its master builder Tony Blair are certain to have, in the next four days, several run-ins with the Left-wing activists who resent the party having been hauled away from its working class roots and ideology, the need for victory in the general election will ensure that the boat is not rocked too wildly.

For, kept out of power for 17 years by voter distrust of its old socialist tenets, Labour now glimpses its greatest opportunity in all that time of forming a government.

And that is largely because the Blairite reforms that have taken the party to the centre ground have made it a credible alternative to the Conservatives; ironically, by making Labour more like the Tories than distinct from them. Indeed, the comparative ease with which Tony Blair has been able to engineer the reforms - the ditching of Clause Four, the weakening of the trade unions' grip on the party and all the other dilutions of its old-style socialism - are testimony to widespread recognition within Labour of this very requirement.

That it has worked is evidenced by the party's commanding lead in the opinion polls ever since Blair became leader and accelerated - with some autocratic style - the modernisation commenced by Neil Kinnock and John Smith.

Indeed, the potency of New Labour must frustrate Tory strategists no end. For no amount of feel-good factor ingredients that the government delivers seems able to seriously wobble that lead.

What can shake it though is Labour itself - as we see from the latest opinion poll today showing a slippage of six points in the gap between it and the Tories and that being blamed on voter perception of disunity in the party. This week, then, the Labour leadership and the spin doctors, though having given themselves plenty of scope for ignoring and suppressing dissent, will be at pains to limit images of disunity emanating from Blackpool.

So, too, will most delegates, particularly those from the 100,000 new members which, just as with their charm effect on the voters, the Blair reforms have attracted.

However, this week is really the dinosaurs' last chance to salvage Labour's socialist stamp and, ironically, they may be deluded into believing that Labour's strong opinion-poll position, which was achieved by the dumping of so much socialist baggage, gives them the latitude to "rebel" without seriously harming the party's electoral fortunes.

Today's six-point setback ought to disabuse boat-rockers of that notion.

But expect the activists this week to make waves over Labour's still vague policies on taxation and spending, with the old guard calling for big spending pledges and increased taxes on the "rich" to pay for them. Watch out, too, for a backlash over the moves to end universal child benefit.

Above all, with a compromise deal already having been rejected, look out for a clash over state pensions as Baroness Castle of Blackburn demands that "prudent" New Labour agrees - at an annual cost of £5.5billion - to restore the link of pensions with earnings, instead of with prices as at present.

That is one old-style socialist package that might give the Tories some ammunition on Labour disunity, but it will first have to get past those delegates who see no sense in putting up pensions by £5 a week when it will only dent the Income Support top-up of the poorer old folk and so only benefit the better-off among the elderly.

But, of course, it is sticking with socialist principles that counts with the old guard, rather than pandering Blair-style to the fickle middle-class voters.

However, shorn of much of their former influence by New Labour's one-member, one-vote moves, the dinosaurs may find that they are being made extinct at Blackpool.

This is because the middle class has different principles - and many of them are now inside the conference hall as delegates as well as up on the platform.

And they are scenting victory through change.

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