Dress fashion man shirt

No style, please, we're on-message - fashion decorum of UK labor Party members

Their eighties Jaeger look may be out of fashion, but new Labour troops are as scared of individuality in dress as they are in thought, writes Melanie McDonagh

It is one of those terrible ironies that the Labour Party conference is happening at virtually the same time as London Fashion Week. Up in Blackpool, the party hacks will be at play; down in London, the beautiful people will be air-kissing, smoking and wearing very long skirts.

If you want an idea of the relationship between the two groups, think of a Venn diagram, with two circles very far apart. Or with a tiny, barely discernible overlap, containing Peter Mandelson, the Blairs, and possibly Paul Boateng.

For all Chris Smith's heroic hype about fashion as the culture of the New Britain, for all the received wisdom that new Labour is a victory of style over content, the impression from this conference, just like last year's, will be of box jackets with padded shoulders for the girls and, if we're lucky, off-the-peg M&S for the boys. On the conference platform, there will be women who were told by Barbara Follett back in 1992 that red suits everyone, and thus, by a lucky chance, find that their instinct for making themselves conspicuous coincides, like some rare planetary conjunction, with a current fashion trend.

The gulf between political dressing and stylish dressing is most painfully apparent in the case of Robin Cook's second wife, Gaynor. For her trip to Brunei, the British press went into one of its fits of heroic gallantry. Contemplating Gaynor's fitted black jacket, unremarkable white dress, OK Ascot hat and godawful shoes, the Mirror enthused: "Stylish Gaynor Cook proved to be a real head-turner as she unveiled her sophisticated new image." If that look was stylish, I am Coco Chanel. Admittedly, the new Mrs Cook's appearance is streets ahead of her incarnation at last year's conference when she turned heads by proving that dowdiness need be no impediment to successful adultery.

But she will not be toppling Cherie Blair as Labour's answer to Diana. Mrs Blair's penchant for working-women's designers like Ronit Zilkha, Ally Capellino and now Paddy Campbell does not mark her out as a conspicuously fashionable figure, but it does show a kind of individuality and courage.

On the bright side, there is no problem right at the top of the party. Cherie's husband went to the very contemporary tailor Paul Smith before his trip to Washington, and his look there was absolutely fine: he seems patently at ease in his clothes. Blair is also advised by the tailor Malcolm Levine, who does film stars.

John Prescott, wearing smart navy suits with crisp white shirts, also looks comfortable with himself; he's a man who likes to look well turned-out. Peter Mandelson is said to go to Richard James, probably the most interesting tailor in London, as well as Levine and Smith.

But for the rest of the party, it is all to the good that newspaper editors do not, just for fun, make parliamentary editors and fashion hacks swap jobs for the week, because the girls would go and hang themselves after the first fringe meeting without so much as setting eyes on Charlie Whelan's suit.

I'll tell you why. It's the herd instinct that makes every male MP shave off his facial hair and don a white shirt, and every female minister embrace the chic of late-eighties Jaeger. It's a uniform: straight jackets, with a severe v-neck showing a simple roundneck white T-shirt (nothing fussy for television), perhaps a brooch to show individuality, a knee-length straight skirt and the ensemble rounded off with court shoes which could be any vintage, from 1981 on. Possibly a scarf at the neck for softness. Mo Mowlam, Margaret Beckett and Joan Ruddock are not identikit characters; why do you suppose they are all stuck in the same Dress for Success cliches of corporate women a decade ago? After a week of this cloned stuff, you weep with gratitude to find Angela Eagle wearing a suit with lapels and a shirt underneath. And you cheer when Oona King wears platform heels in the Commons. Even better, she was spotted at a wedding in a white organza skirt; and Yvette Cooper wore regal blue velvet Vivienne Westwood when she married Ed Balls.

But as for the rest, forget it. The conformity in the party's policy and direction is mirrored in the uniform look. Until the top brass relax their control of every aspect of their troops' life, no Blairite Babe will have the confidence to dress as themselves. The tragedy is that some women simply shouldn't be "Folletted". Not everyone can wear bright fuschia jackets or knee-length skirts. New MPs such as Sally Keeble and Fiona Mactaggart, who hitherto displayed a strong personal style, now look as if they have been poured into a uniform.

Tamasin Doe of Phaidon, editor of The Fashion Book, says wistfully that "Michael Foot was just a hero for duffle coats". Come to think of it, an earlier generation of Labour grandees put their successors to shame. Think Barbara Castle, and her wig called Lucy and her gold evening dresses, and you see what they mean by style. Or Jennie Lee, who rarely went out without a real or fake fur coat, and once swept into a late-night Commons debate wearing a clinging emerald green evening dress, to the consternation of the Speaker.

As the tailor Ozwald Boateng remarked: "If the party is trying to modernise the traditions of government, it should be doing the same with its clothes. It may be just a matter of time."

Let's hope. Meanwhile, we can console ourselves with his brother Paul's in-your-face, non-conformist pin-stripe suits.