And I asked the question of CM that appears at the end of the previous paragraph: who the hell is Tony Blair? CM gave me this answer (which I have tweaked): Tony is unformed; he is plastic; he is the egg, not the chicken; he represents potential, what does not yet exist; he is the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.Consider, invited CM, the manner of Tony’s elevation. The man who appointed Frank Field, and who then disappointed him; who talked about radical welfare reform, but who has not yet backed it in practice. Who the hell is he?Instinct failing me, I found myself in conversation with a Cabinet Minister whom I like and trust, and who I will call CM. The man who has, in 12 months, completely reversed a 30-year process of centralisation, yet still exercises a power over his backbenchers that seems tyrannical. The man who promised to reform Parliament, and has nevertheless adapted himself to some of its more disagreeable and alienating Question Time conventions. The man who embodies new and informal politics, yet flies out to Tuscany to leave Frank Field to be pointlessly and counterproductively savaged by his own trained hounds.

I know neither what Tony Blair wants to do over welfare and on electoral reform, nor whether he intends to prosecute an ethical foreign policy, nor whether he sees the possibility of a realignment of British politics, nor whether he has a grand plan that extends beyond trying to create a first-class education system in this country, and hoping that this will help us compete in the next, cursed, millennium.Every time I examine Blair I see paradox, and not resolution. And you only have to consider Ken Livingstone’s implausible mix of good transport policies with daft left populism to see what a socialist alternative would look like.But at this point I begin to falter My psychohistory isn’t working as well as it did I have lost confidence in my own judgement. “There is not enough enterprise in our society,” Mr Brown said. “I want to reward risk and help people to become more motivated to succeed.” You can practically hear Diane Abbott’s sneer. Blair is less of a Labour insider than Brown, and is – I believe – viscerally hostile to the big battalions (the trade unions) who once ruled the party. But those who see in the Chancellor the signs of a yearning for a return to the spiritual homeland of Labour should examine the interview he gave yesterday on the subject of enterprise. You may recall the confidence with which it was asserted that Harriet Harman would be retained in the Cabinet, that anyone other than Jack Cunningham would be the Enforcer, and that young Alan Milburn would make his debut.

As the Sunday papers trawled the previous Monday’s news desperately trying to make something out of it, we discovered sources who were clear that the reshuffle was almost entirely a shot aimed by No 10 at the muscular solar plexus of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
There are two versions of this rivalry now extant. I tipped Kinnock to succeed Foot (Hattersley was then the favourite), Major to take over from Thatcher, Hague from Major and – after the 92 election – Blair to lead Labour to victory. And all this unremarkable success was achieved through by a kind of Asimovian psychohistory: look at the trends, examine the trajectory, put yourself in the politicians’ shoes – and predict. The second, which some on the left particularly like to believe, is that there is indeed a big ideological gap, with Brown as the custodian of traditional statist values, and Blair as a parvenu suburban, concerned mostly for the sensibilities of Mondeo Man and Clio Woman.Any of these arguments could have elements of truth about them, I suppose But not enough, I would contend, to explain anything. According to this argument, Brown and Blair are so close in ideological terms that – deprived of substantial issues to argue about – their offices fall to seeking to outmanoeuvre each other in the columns of newspapers and on TV news bulletins.