Last week's Labour conference was a sickening spectacle. Empty platitude followed stomach-turning platitude, as the conference was turned into one long photo-opportunity for the Shadow Cabinet.
But singing 'We Shall Overcome' or We are the champtions of the world' couldn't hide the basic fact: Kinnockism has no answers and no policy for change: it has all the substance of the middle of a Polo mint.
Kinnock has just one idea: to repackage the party into an acceptable face for the establishment, and thus get elected. Behind the the stage-sets and double-breasted suits there is nothing to meet the crisis of British capitalism or the problems facing working people.
Labour conferences in future will have to assess the fate of Kinnockite new realism; that fate is either to go down to defeat or to instal the most right wing Labour government ever.
Either way, a protracted media stunt is too feeble to push socialism off the agenda for long; Kinnock's 'Opportunity Britain' will go the same way as Harold Wilson's 'white heat of the technological revolution' - into the dustbin. The the left will be back, and socialism with it.
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