So the Labour conference is over, thank fuck. Some commentators have compared the modern party conference to an American political convention rather than forums for discussion and debate – all razzamatazz and tickertape for the leader and no substance. But Bournemouth ’07 was more like one of the old Soviet Communist Party Congresses that some of us dimly remember from another time – the dutiful applause from the hall combining genuine warmth and approval for the new leadership with the lurking fear that remaining seated during a standing ovation might very well get you summarily shot.

However, there’s one obvious difference; the Soviets were happy to admit to being left-wing. They walked the walk, but also talked the talk. Contrast that with the gruesome spectacle of minister after minister standing up to wrap themselves in the flag, indulging in the sort of rhetoric on immigration that used to draw howls of protest when emanating from the lips of a Portillo or Howard, and lifting whole sections of their speeches direct from Daily Mail editorials, and you begin to get some measure of the grotesque cynicism at work this past week by the seaside.

Iain Macwhirter described Gordon Brown’s speech on Monday as the most right-wing by any British leader since Michael Howard in 2005, and he’s probably correct. But that label ‘right-wing’ needs a little qualification. Those of us who have [pejoratively] been labelled "bloggertarians" combine what most people would regard as typically right-of-centre positions on economic and political issues – lower taxes, smaller state, less government regulation and interference, drop bombs on uncooperative foreigners, you know the drill – with social views which are more ‘progressive’ - broadly, that your orifices are yours to use as you will, whether that means putting coke up one or cock up another, and it’s almost never any of the government’s business which goes where.

The New Labour on show this week in Bournemouth, by contrast, are quite deliberately cherry-picking their initiatives to appeal to the reactionary, tabloid-reading vote. If you fly a little plastic St George’s flag from your van during football tournaments, Gordon wants you to watch the match in his big tent. A political philosophy apparently founded on collated cuttings from The Sun Says rather than Hayek, the keynote Labour speakers this week hit all the riffs that used to (and still do) make the dinosaurs of the Tory party purr; lock ‘em up, Britain first, stop the wogs at Calais and so on.

Blair’s Labour could never be accused of being reactionaries when it came to the "equality agenda", but there was always a strong authoritarian inclination in evidence too, manifested in the grubby forms of Blunkett, Clarke and Reid in particular. On the evidence of this past week, though, Brown’s government plans to outflank the Tories on the traditional Sun territory of immigration and law’n’order, too.

If I were to put a poster in my window proclaiming "British jobs for British workers", I’d have the police knocking on my door within the week. (Read that sentence again and tell me I’m wrong.) And it’s difficult to imagine a spectacle more squalid than Jack Straw burnishing his credentials as Blackburn’s answer to Harry Callaghan, regaling us all with tales of his derring-do in tackling crime on the streets of Britain:

How each of us reacts if we encounter a burglar or a street robber has to be a matter of individual discretion - and there's a critical line between responsibility and recklessness. I know from personal experience that you have all of a millisecond to make the judgement about whether to intervene.

...to which the only rational response is to hope that the plucky muggers keep trying till they finally get the bastard.

Gordon Brown’s response, meanwhile, to not being "British enough" has been a teeth-clenchingly awful year-long offensive of Britishness – lauding Gazza, waffling on about a ‘British Day’, and inviting in the Mail on Sunday to watch an England match in his living room. Worried about a new-look Tory party stealing votes by moving left on social issues, he deftly (and cleverly) neutralises these concerns by veering right, and adopting the views and tone of a particularly objectionable London cabbie. Add in the Puritanical streak that sees the new government rowing back on casinos and 24-hour drinking, not to mention reclassifying cannabis again, and the overall direction of policy provides little for any sensible person to cheer.

Rather like the flash twat who buys a big shiny sports car just to show off, it’s obvious to all and sundry that Gordo is overcompensating. But small-cocked men with big cars do, depressingly, get laid more often than well-endowed men with Skodas. (Mr Eugenides doesn't own a car, from which you may draw your own conclusions.) And, in a race against a pale blue hybrid with passengers pouring sugar into the petrol tank, unfortunately I know who my money's on.