we must take soft options, not hard choices."But formulaic language aside, the Blair tactic isn't at all meaningless. The temptation is increased by the numbing, tumpety-tum prose considered essential for new-Labour launches: "We are proud of our past but we are not living in it." Or: "This new programme ... is not about soft options but about making hard choices." I find this has the curious effect of making one play the tune backwards: "We are living in our past, but we are not proud of it ... How many people would want to vote down their own party manifesto just before an election? If this vote embarrasses Blair it is more likely to do so by the overwhelmingly, North Korean-style 99.8 per cent majority he wins than by evidence of serious internal dissent.This will lead some people to dismiss the tactic as another meaningless PR stunt. In the autumn, party members will be offered a straight yes-or-no to Labour's likely manifesto commitments on all the other issues, with no room to register dissent about this or that, or to list preferred priorities.By the time it happens the election will seem very close.

Nor is the pledge to put the draft, slimmed- down manifesto to a ballot of all Labour members nearly as radical a step as Tony Blair and his colleagues suggest. It is about telling the party, and telling the country.These days, Labour policy is made behind closed doors in a process as opaque, private and controlled as most of what happens in Whitehall; in that rather depressing respect, shadow ministers are better prepared for office than is generally realised.This won't be changed by the programme of meetings and speeches that Labour announced yesterday. Like most such exercises, this has been aimed at morale, not policy. The attitude is: "Let them get it off their chests and go home feeling they've been heard. It will cheer them up immensely."At first sight, my theory about listening exercises being a distress signal is demolished by the dramatic news, also announced yesterday, that Labour is to design its election manifesto only after, in John Prescott's words, "the largest, most ambitious consultation process ever undertaken by a political party", and that this is to be followed by a ballot of all Labour members on the draft election manifesto.The answer is that this is not a listening exercise at all It is a telling exercise.

They, the party chairman Brian Mawhinney and the Prime Minister himself will rely on polling, focus groups and their instincts before they turn to the activists. Surprise, surprise.Certainly the Tory hierarchy, who had commissioned the exercise, cannot have been surprised by a word of the published result Its impact on their manifesto-making will be limited. Activists are not typical of the wider electorate at which the party must aim, so their views, however pungent, need to be diluted and in some cases ignored.For that reason, Danny Finkelstein and the clever fellows at Central Office will not linger late into the night worrying about what Tory activists in Milton Keynes think of the welfare state. Cabinet ministers have been dispatched around the country to be told off by some of the 30,000 people who turned up to 800-plus meetings. Yesterday, an edited version of the tellings-off was published under the title, Listening to the Conservative Party.And what do we hear? Only that the Conservative Party is Conservative, being strongly in favour of the Union Jack, low taxes, identity cards, hanging and inherited wealth, and similarly against federalists, scroungers, red tape, juvenile crime and recreational drugs. A dispirited Roy Hattersley was harangued by assorted maniacs in T-shirts while a grim-looking Peter Mandelson, then in his moustache-wearing days, stood taking notes.Over the past year the Conservatives, facing their own little troubles, have conducted a similar exercise with their party members.