MANCHESTER, England - Gordon Brown has won some more time as Labour party leader and Britain's prime minister. How much time nobody can yet be sure.

In a highly personal, sometimes passionate, speech to his party conference in Manchester, Brown skilfully blended his personal political credo on fairness with new policy announcements on health and education which appealed to the party faithful.

It was a clear reminder that, at root, he is "one of them" in a way that the more charismatic, more achieving Tony Blair never was.

In fact Brown's speech, unusually introduced by his popular wife Sarah (does everybody need a Sarah on the ticket these days?), reminded me more of the first Labour prime minister I ever reported, Harold Wilson.

Wilson's chief political attribute too was his perceived cleverness. One day reporters were quizzing him about difficulties in the Labour Party and he riposted: "What's going on? I'll tell you what, I'm going on." That, in a sentence, was Gordon Brown's conference message too.

Yes, there were apologies, for example over the 10p tax rate fiasco, a blunder which required a £2.8 billion rescue which the government could ill afford.

There was an acceptance, with a wry grin, that he was unpopular. So would there be a change in Gruff Gordon's style? Would there hell: "I'm not going to try to be something I'm not. And if people say I'm too serious, quite honestly there's a lot to be serious about."

It was a reminder that in Brown's early days at No 10 his headmasterly dullness had actually been seen as a refreshing antidote to the high-flying PR of Blair.

It was a measure of Brown's difficulties with the polls and with party insurrections that his speech didn't go further than Britain.

Just half a page of 20 devoted to the outside world. Though he did promise immediate action to "rebuild the world financial system around clear principles." Starting when he heads to the U.N. in New York this week.

That is quite an undertaking but of course the economic crisis has taken politics onto the terrain where Brown is more comfortable than many others. He and Labour are happy to see more government intervention.

But were his domestic promises enough to keep him in the job? For now anyway, most seemed to think, they were.

Union chiefs liked his fairness agenda and many bought the argument that in the current circumstances experience is needed in Number 10. They heeded Brown's warning: "The British people would not forgive us at this time if we looked inwards to the affairs of our party when our duty is to the interests of our country."

That helped him with a clever snipe too at his challengers both within and without the Labour Party.

The previous day the youthful Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who has been busily widening his party contacts around the conference fringe meetings, went well outside his foreign affairs brief in a conference speech in which he insisted repeatedly that "The Tories are beatable."

It carried the implication that Brown wasn't making the Conservatives look that way.

As a practised politician Miliband stayed within the bounds, overtly praising Brown. "Gordon, it's not just the policies. It is no exaggeration to say that you have transformed the debate about international development in this country over the last 11 years."

But international development, sadly, is not the issue which tops many voters' lists of preferences.

And when Miliband then walked across and patted the prime minister on the back it looked to many like some new chief executive presenting a soon to be retired chairman with life membership of the local golf club.

That's politics for you. But Brown plays some aspects of that game pretty well too - politics, that is, not golf. And there was a neat rejoinder in his conference speech.

"Everyone knows that I'm in favour of apprenticeships, but let me tell you this is no time for a novice."

An effective salvo at the expense of the young Conservative leader David Cameron? Certainly. But many in the hall were looking also at Miliband. Who, of course, could do nothing but applaud.

Brown's speech has almost certainly bought him some extra time.

But it is the polls and the political contests in the coming months which will decide his future.

If he goes on delivering the results of a loser the Labour delegates who applauded him this week won't stick with him forever.

MANCHESTER, England - Every party conference develops its own chemistry. With his black eyebrows and silver hair Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling looks a bit like something you would produce with a chemistry set anyway.

But his speech at this year's Labour Party conference and the economic debate that led up to it, peppered with union leaders' demands for revenge on excessive boardroom bonanzas and "city spivs," effectively set the tone for this one.

Darling began with a tribute to the quality and experience of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. And with this quiet, fellow Scot you did not suspect he did so in a calculated bid to keep his job in the dangling reshuffle which Brown has been using as a weapon to keep the Cabinet onside. He actually meant it.

What you saw in Manchester was Labour delegates saying to themselves "OK, so the public don't like him. In a year he has led us from an 11 point lead to a 28 point deficit in the polls. But maybe not all of it is his fault. There's no evidence, as there was for example before the Tories turfed out Margaret Thatcher, that we would be any more popular as a party if he went."

They add: "He does at least know his onions on all this financial stuff that is now dominating the world agenda."

Former leader Neil Kinnock put it to me this way: "Clearly these are not conditions that Gordon or any other sensible person would want. But the fact of the matter is that on the basis of his long term record, the fact that he managed this economy through its 10 most stable and successful years in economic history, means that the captain we need on the bridge as we hit this storm is Gordon Brown."

At this conference Labour is not just using the economic arguments to postpone a decision on the leadership. In a wider sense they feel it, to a degree, putting them back in tune with the British people. They are talking the same language as the man in the saloon bar.

The Conservatives, they lose no opportunity to remind themselves, is one of non-intervention and let the markets work. But in a world where even a Republican administration in the United States is buying up the biggest insurance company and nationalizing banks and mortgage providers. Interventionism is suddenly becoming respectable again.

Righting economic excesses is no longer possible, many inside and outside the Labour party now agree, if you have global markets monitored by purely national regulators. And that is a message which Brown has been preaching to the international economic community for some years now.

But what of the Labour party demands to have "something done" about the City's bonus bonanzas and those who have crippled financial institutions by selling them short. Darling, in his passable impression of a reassuring chancellor, did not have too much for them.

He had little to satisfy Labour's class warriors, those on the left and in the unions, who are now insisting "this is the time to nationalize a few more banks, impose a windfall tax on energy companies and slash those city bonuses by law."

Brown and Darling agree that the bonus culture which City finance workers have grown to demand almost irrespective of results does produce excessive risk taking. They agree that selling short, now restricted, hasn't helped the situation. But they will leave much of that business to the Financial Services Authority.

They are reluctant still to interfere too far with markets. They know jobs, salaries and bonuses would simply be exported if they clamped down too hard.

And after years of trying to make the choice between Labour and Tory governments as irrelevant to the business community in Britain as is the choice between Republican and Democratic to business in the U.S., they don't want to earn the tag of being "anti-business" now.

LONDON - As Georgians and South Ossetians began sweeping out burned buildings and gathering up the shrapnel fragments one thing was clear, this is a fragile cessation of hostilities, not yet a peace settlement. Russian and Georgian authorities are each accusing the other of violating the cease-fire terms and of as-yet unverifiable war crimes and genocide. Resolving such accusations could take years in the international court.

A Russian soldier flashes a victory sign from his truck on a road near Gori in Georgia.

More immediately, key questions about the status of the disputed territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia remain to be settled. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov seems now to be suggesting that the populations of the two disputed territories should be involved in that decision.

Negotiating on behalf of the European Union, French President Nicolas Sarkozy insisted: "We need and require that the Russian side guarantees the sovereignty of Georgia."

Back came his Russian counterpart Dimitry Medvedev to warn: "We recognize the sovereignty of Georgia ... but this does not mean that a sovereign state should have the possibility to do what it wants."

That has not stopped Russia using its vast military strength to crush a neighbor of whom it disapproves, mostly because Georgia wants to join the EU and NATO.

The Russian military action in Georgia was not undertaken just with President Mikheil Saakashvili and Tbilisi in mind. Russia's first military incursion into another country since the break-up of the old Soviet Union was a deliberate demonstration that Vladimir Putin's Russia (and the conduct of the conflict made absolutely clear that it is still Putin's, not Medvedev's Russia) does not care about popularity.

Russia will settle for the respect due to a re-emerging power ready to make cynical use of its military might. It is not operating in the 21st century style of diplomacy. It has succeeded in re-drawing the map by the force of arms and shows no regrets about having done so.

The action in Georgia was also a deliberate signal that Russia does not forget slights and that, sooner or later, it will revenge itself for them. Calling the military action in Georgia a "peace enforcement operation" deliberately echoed NATO language over Kosovo's breakaway from Serbia, a reminder that Russians see the West as employing double standards over separatist movements there and in South Ossetia.

The message Russia wanted above all to deliver to its near neighbors was that Moscow still remains determined to resist "encirclement" and that those who flirt with joining NATO, entering the EU or co-operating with the U.S. missile defense plan in Europe will rue the consequences.

NATO's promise to Saakashvili at its Bucharest summit in April that Georgia's membership was a matter of when rather than if seems to have emboldened Georgia's president and his country to launch the assault on South Ossetia's separatists, thus falling into a Russian trap and enabling Putin and Medvedev to claim they were intervening to protect Russian passport holders in South Ossetia.

And although France, Germany and others refused in April to grant Georgia and Ukraine the NATO Membership Action Programs demanded by President George W. Bush, the encouraging noises issued then about the longer term prospects for joining the alliance clearly stoked up false expectations in Tbilisi.

A cry that journalists in Georgia have encountered this week from puzzled, bombed-out civilians was "Where was NATO when we needed it? Where were our supposed friends in the U.S.?" That sort of support was never, ever going to be forthcoming.

For Saakashvili, who came to office pledging to restore to Georgia the de facto separatist provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the sadness is that premature action has now probably lost him all chance of ever achieving that reunification.

The turnout at his post-invasion rally would seem to suggest that his presidency has at least temporarily been strengthened rather than weakened despite the dismemberment of the Army. As one Georgian put it to a reporter: "We elected him and if we don't like him we'll get rid of him ourselves, without Russia." But the pulling together in adversity factor will not last him for ever.

As for Saakashvili's hopes of taking Georgia into NATO, those too have taken a dive. Countries like France and Germany which were unwilling in April to anger Russia by giving Georgia a MAP will be even more reluctant to do so now when the issue formally comes up again in December.

And while some NATO members will argue that Russia cannot be allowed to wield a veto over NATO's club membership, the opponents of Georgian entry will argue that would-be members have to demonstrate firm territorial borders, plus economic and political stability, qualifications which Georgia may have trouble in meeting in the near future. What shape is the Georgian Army in now to make a contribution to NATO?

The other question which arises is how those countries who wish to can penalize Russia for what they see as brutal over-reaction in Georgia. It is all very well for U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, even Condoleezza Rice, to suggest that Russia's world standing will fall and that Moscow must be punished. But do they have anything better than plastic sabers to rattle?

The West has spent two decades drawing Russia into the solving of communal problems like climate change and terrorism. It needs Moscow's cooperation in persuading Iran not to develop nuclear weapons.

Even in a gentler version of realpolitik than that espoused by Vladimir Putin, it is not going to throw away all that to please four million affronted Georgians, whatever gesture politics we may now see over cancelled joint military exercises and cultural exchanges.

LONDON, England – They used to call him the "Teflon Taioseach" as a tribute to his impervious political skin and survivability.  Now Bertie Ahern has announced he will quit, seemingly a victim to the long saga of accusations and investigations into alleged illegal payments into his bank accounts in the 1990s.
 

Bertie Ahern played an important role in the Northern Ireland peace process..

Whatever the eventual findings of the tribunal whose rights he has been challenging, it would be sad if the affair were to dominate the political epitaph of a remarkable politician who not only won three Irish elections but who played a major part alongside Tony Blair in the successful outcome of the Northern Ireland peace process. Typically, Mr. Ahern went straight from his mother’s funeral into crucial negotiations at a key stage of the Good Friday agreement.

In an age of carefully manicured soundbites and carefully orchestrated public appearances, Bertie Ahern - and everyone knows him as Bertie - was very much a people’s politician, approachable, folksy and quick with the repartee. Even if there were some famous mis-spoken  “Bertie-isms” like his description of a development which "upset the apple tart."
 
Unlike many at the top he would spend hours at a weekend in his constituency walking around talking to people at every level.

Tony Blair said that there was no other politician with whom he had shared so many cups of tea as they discussed the next move forward. But it wasn’t always tea in Mr Ahern’s life.

At one previous period when his financial affairs were casting a cloud I went round the pubs he used regularly in Dublin, chatting to the locals. It was impossible to find anyone with a word to say against him, even if one or two declared: “I wouldn’t trust him any further than any of the others, but I’d still vote for him.” One regular declared over his pint of Guinness: “He may be a rascal. But he’s our kind of rascal.”

Bertie never missed a trick with the media either. Knowing that I am a devotee of the racetrack when not reporting politics he was not above asking me for a tip as we sat down for an interview.

One time when I went to interview Tony Blair at an EU leaders summit in Austria I found Bertie Ahern on the hotel room balcony with the British Prime Minister.
“There you are. Two for the price of one,” said Mr. Blair’s then Press Secretary Alastair Campbell. Bertie Ahern happily played along, even making a tactful retreat on camera at the point at which I turned to Blair and said: “Now, prime minister, if I may concentrate on British affairs.“

There has always been, of course, a steel beneath the charm. You don’t win three elections and preside over an economic miracle without that. But the tragedy is that the manner of Mr Ahern’s passing from the role of Taioseach will now almost certainly disqualify him from running for a role which many thought would suit him, that of the first permanent president of the  European Council under the new EU constitution. He could  have been a real contender for that  along with Blair and various other European prime ministers past and present.

Bertie won’t be going though before he has made an address this month  to the joint houses of the U.S. Congress, a rare honor for the prime minister of a small country and one which bears testament to his real achievement in the peace process.

LONDON, England – “Never write a letter when you are angry” says the old Chinese proverb. To which I would reply: “Never take a letter to London Heathrow’s new Terminal Five unless you want to become Very Angry Indeed."

Not only did they get the big things wrong at Terminal Five, like forgetting that passengers would be bringing bags with them or  that staff would need somewhere to park. They made a fair old mess of some of the little ones too.

"How are the stress levels?" I asked the check-in lady as I headed for Bucharest on Monday.  "Not too bad so far," she replied. "But then I’ve only worked here for an hour."

My own blood pressure was soon on the rise. Having deposited my bag and acquired my boarding pass I inquired where I could post the two urgent letters I had penned at dawn. "No idea" said  the first  tee-shirted "Can I help you?" person whom I passed. "I don’t think they’ve put  any post boxes in Terminal Five," said the second. "I’ll have to ask." She disappeared to do so,  never to be seen again. They’ve got Prada and Harrods and Caviar House. But no postbox? I persevered. "Oh yes there is one - down in Arrivals," said another. So I tried again.

Surely in the huge Departures section somebody had thought of providing a receptacle for passengers who needed to post a letter."Oh I think there is a post box somewhere on this level too," said the next helpful soul. "But I’ve no idea where."

Cue for a helpful male by the departures desk, by my count adviser No 5.  "Oh yes there’s a post box airside," he declared.  "Are you really, really sure?"  I asked. "I don’t want to get the other side of immigration and  find I can’t post my letter."

"I can guarantee it," he declared, with all the certainty of those who tell you "I’ll put the cheque in the post today," or who promise "Honestly, guv, this horse is the fastest thing on four legs." "You really can guarantee it?" I pressed. "Er, well , I’m pretty sure," he replied, which reduced things to somewhere short of a sure-fire certainty.

So I sought more assurance.  "I’ll check," he said. While he did so,  another of the cluster of problem-solvers chimed in. "There are postboxes in the building," she said helpfully. "But they were all sealed off when the Queen came to open the Terminal  and they haven’t been re-opened yet.

"I bet they’d have opened one if she had asked. After all, it is still called the Royal Mail.

Back came informant No 5. Yes there is definitely a post box the other side,  after the security checks, he declared. He had the sort of face which made me trust him.

So, having retrieved my shoes and laptop bag,  I renewed my quest airside with anybody who appeared to have some vague connection with running Terminal Five. "Can you tell me where the postbox is?"Don’t know, sorry."  "No idea." "Don’t think there is one." "Not this side, Sir.

"Finally I saw a fast-striding , black-suited lady with a British Airports Authority logo. I caught up with her and tackled her as she reached a gent who was clearly her boss. "Tell me please where the post box is," I said through teeth so gritted by now that I was spewing chips of enamel."Nothing this side," said the boss man. "You should have asked before you came airside. There isn’t a post box here.

"I embarked on a short and succinct version of the inquiries I had made and the answers I had been given. The clipped tones may have been a hint for clearly he detected the red mist rising. Stretching out a hand,  he interjected:  "Give them to me Sir, I’ll see they are posted."

You can see how some people make it to management.As for my guarantor, terminal side, if I ever see him again it will be a case of  "Come in No 5. Your time is Up."