It was not exactly "fight, fight and fight again to save the party we love", one experienced Labour party observer remarked after Gordon Brown's speech to the TUC conference in Liverpool.
The unflattering comparison with Hugh Gaitskell's great rallying call to his party almost five decades ago sums up the TUC conference this year. It is flat to the point of depression – the party has no fight.
Brown's speech was "cautiously welcomed" by Dave Prentis, the general secretary of Unison, who thought it gave "some good signals" about the prime minister's willingness to defend public services.
But Brown cannot afford to be giving speeches that are "cautiously welcomed" at this stage in the cycle.
With his party so far adrift of the Tories, the unions needed something stirring, inspiring, uplifting. Instead, they got a nuanced, tactical speech that ducked and weaved on the issue of spending cuts, leaving nothing much clearer.
Prentis admitted he still feared public services would face Labour cuts and that more privatisation was on the way.
"We want the truth," he said – so his cautious welcome really meant he suspected that the wool was being pulled over his members' eyes.
On the margins, in the fringe meetings, the atmosphere is as dead as the Norwegian Blue (Monty Python's parrot).
Yesterday lunchtime, the Morning Star staged a fringe meeting entitled Trades Unions Fighting Back: A Political Discussion.
Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley, the joint general secretaries of Unite, were supposed to be there (according to the Congress guide) – but neither arrived. Neither did Paul Kenny, of the GMB.
There was lots of talk of how well the Morning Star is doing now it is backed (financially) by Unite.
It was left to Bob Crow, of the RMT, to give the keynote address, full of rousing talk about the need to "support workers in struggle".
But it was hardly mainstream, or Gaitskellite in its rhetoric. The problem is that nobody is inspiring Labour now. There is no "fight".
