'A good day for Mr Gray'
Iain Gray is given to literary quotation.
In his conference speech, he cited, without naming, his favourite author, Ernest Hemingway.
In A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway noted: "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places."
Mr Gray offered this as an exhortation to resilience, to resistance against the economic crisis.
Equally, one might see it as featuring a note of resignation. After all, Hemingway goes on to say: "It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.
If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
I confess that, to my shame, I did not immediately recognise the quotation, despite having read the book some years back.
However, I did recognise Iain Gray's wider strategy in the speech.
Without overt apology (such things are not commonly done), he was saying that Labour had got things wrong in Scotland.
Without criticising his predecessors (such things are still less common), he was saying that Labour had to work endlessly and re-engage in order to overcome the incumbent SNP at Holyrood - with the small matters of European Elections and a UK General Election in the by-going.
For a first conference speech as leader, this was a good performance, very warmly received in the hall.
There were apparently 35 ovations at sundry points. (Confession number two: I was not counting.)
To be blunt, some inside Labour had fretted more than a little about Mr Gray's delivery. Was he sufficiently animated? Would he come across as passionate?
They were content today. It was a thoughtful, well-presented, meticulous and personal speech.
Perhaps the speech patterns, as some commented, are still somewhat lacking in variety. But there was vigour, a sense of commitment and a couple of genuine funnies.
Is it enough, though? In itself, no. Labour in Scotland is still weak on policy detail.
For example, it is one thing to excoriate the SNP proposal (now deferred) for local income tax.
But what is Labour's alternative, how would they reform the council tax?
Team Gray insist that is a function of the electoral cycle, not vacillation. We are, they remind us, two years out from a Holyrood election.
They have a policy making process well under way, enhanced today by the recruitment of external advisers.
For another thing, though, there is the economic crisis. It does not look like getting radically better any time soon.
It is legitimate to pursue the SNP over policies at Holyrood. It is legitimate to argue that policies have been dropped - or have fallen short.
And it is legitimate for the SNP to offer rebuttals.
But I believe it will strike the voters as relatively misplaced to accuse the Scottish Government, as Iain Gray did, of adopting a "do nothing" attitude to the recession.
Alex Salmond would respond that he has done what he can - within the limits of devolution.
Plus, politically, is it not more likely that opprobrium over this issue of the economy will attack to the UK Government - and Labour?
Those are, of course, future verdicts for the voters. But, on balance, this was a good day for Iain Gray.
I'm 
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