 I feel like a bit of a chump.
I strongly defended the Blair's right to privacy over MMR, arguing for that position at The Times leader conference and sticking to that line in any number of private conversations.
My main argument was that, never mind Mr and Mrs Blair, Leo Blair had rights and this was part of his private medical record.
So am I impressed to discover from Mrs Blair's memoirs that the family (to whom I am generally very sympathetic) are happy for this detail to be public now she is selling a book?
Er, no.
Top ten list of things Gordon Brown could do without right now? I reckon Cherie Blair's memoirs would be on there.
So he won't like Saturday's Times much. Because the book expected in the autumn is out....now.
My colleague Janice Turner has been interviewing her and the paper will be bringing you extracts and exclusive stories over the next week.
Starting right now.
 Yesterday I posted Tony Blair's interesting comments about Republicans. Before I go on, let me recap.
Mr Blair says that the future of politics is going to be more open v closed than left v right. So I asked him who on the right he regarded as on his side - the open side - of the new argument, and who on the left wasn't on his side. Here's his reply: I think you can see the Republicans in the US who are on the pro-immigration side of the debate, on the pro-free-trade side, the Americans who are Democrats but protectionist.
I mused that this sounded very much like a hat tip towards John McCain.
Since then I've learned more, the information coming from sources close to Mr Blair.
Senator McCain and Tony Blair are not strangers. In the final stages of Tony Blair's period in office, Senator McCain became his close ally.
The Prime Minister was determined to shift the position of the US Government on climate change. He reached out to McCain, seeking the Senator's advice on how to shift public opinion in America and move Bush from his sceptical position.
In the run up to the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, the two men met three times.
There was one in Davos, another during Mr Blair's final Prime Ministerial visit to Washington and one more in London.
McCain helped Blair pitch his argument and played a role in the movement in the US position that followed.
No wonder Mr Blair is happy to regard McCain as his partner.
Updated: more on Blair and McCain's dealings
At the end of the interview Murad and I conducted with Tony Blair about his Faith Foundation, I had time for a final question. This one about politics, not religion.
I noted that in his recent speech on faith Mr Blair had included this arresting statement: I sometimes say to people that in modern politics, the dividing line is often less between traditional left vs. right; but more about open vs. closed.
Now he tells us, I said to him.
And then I asked which politicians on the right he regarded as on his side, the open side, of the new argument. He replied: I think you can see the Republicans in the US who are on the pro-immigration side of the debate, on the pro-free-trade side, the Americans who are Democrats but protectionist. I think the thing that has come home to me most since leaving office is just the speed at which the world is opening up.
No names. He's too smart for that. But I think it's pretty obvious what he is saying.
 There's been a lot written about why Tony Blair should not have accepted his £500,000 role as adviser to JP Morgan:
There's Geoffrey Wheatcroft in The Guardian; and Geoffrey Levy in The Daily Mail; and a leader in The Independent and one in The Telegraph too.
And they all say pretty much the same - that it's a pretty bad show.
I can't agree. And I don't rest my case on the weak point that Mr Blair is now retired from elective politics and can do what he likes.
Instead I positively welcome both the offer made to Mr Blair and his decision to accept.
First, I don't dislike organisations like JP Morgan, I celebrate them. They make money by satisfying consumer demand. The people who work for them are making the world a better place.
I am therefore pleased that someone with Mr Blair's talents should find it worthwhile putting those talents to such use. I am glad that JP Morgan and he were able to agree a price for his services.
Second, I am pleased that JP Morgan put such a high value on our former Prime Minister. I wouldn't like to think we had been governed by someone who wasn't worth much to a commercial operation. And I wouldn't like to think that an American bank could acquire cheaply the advice of someone who had been our Prime Minister.
Mr Blair's salary should be a matter of quiet satisfaction to his fellow countrymen. It is a small symbol that subjected to a very tough test - how much is he worth to a commercial outfit - one of our statesman is regarded as highly valuable.
 The New Years Honours list strongly suggests that Tony Blair has decided against having a separate resignation list.
The giveaway is not that former press spokesman Tom Kelly becomes a Companion of the Order of the Bath.
This is a fairly common award for reasonably high office in the civil service. My Mum always finds it amusing that retired Admirals are often awarded the Order of the Bath once they no longer command the seas. It is conceivable that Kelly would receive this honour on an ordinary list even if Blair were planning his own later.
No, the giveaway is the CBE to Liz Lloyd, gazetted simply as "lately special adviser, office of the PM". Lloyd was a purely political appointment and this honour is for personal service to Blair. She wouldn't have been on this list if a resignation list was in the offing.
I understand the politics behind Blair's decision. After "cash for honours" any list might have been a political fiasco. And he can always slip a few of his team in at a time over the next couple of lists.
Since some (Philip Gould, Sally Morgan) are already in the Lords and others (Alastair Campbell, I bet, and perhaps Peter Hyman) aren't really accepting honours sort of people, he could get the thing over with in a couple of lists. And perhaps Gordon Brown has already agreed to this. The Lloyd honour hints that he has.
But I hope Blair does see his people - Jonathan Powell, Anji Hunter, Matthew Taylor, among others - right.
It's not a big deal, I suppose, but I think that loyal service to a long serving Prime Minister should be marked.
I've long argued that anyone wanting to understand the Blair years, indeed anyone wanting to understand political strategy full stop, should read Dick Morris's book Behind the Oval Office, the history of his years as adviser to Bill Clinton. (I particularly recommend the edition with the original memos, but that's not essential).
But this morning Gavin Esler's excellent BBC radio show, The Clinton Years, (which you can find and listen to here) made me realise that even so, I had underestimated the importance of the Clinton-Morris relationship to UK politics.
The documentary reprised the battle between Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" and Morris's triangulation, culminating in the victory for Morris and Clinton.
It reminded me that it wasn't just the impact of the Morris-Clinton strategy on Brown and Blair that was important. It was also the intensely strong impact of Gingrich's victory on the Conservative Party.
Just at the moment when the Republican's swept the board with a populist small government, right-wing campaign, Major's Conservative Party was floundering, trailing very badly indeed. The lesson seemed obvious. Become more rigorous and more radical, make clear small government promises and you can defeat a third-way politician like Clinton. The Right was convinced. And this led, in time to the Redwood leadership challenge.
But Clinton did not lie down under his 1994 defeat. He moved to the centre and, with Morris, gave real content to his Third Way rhetoric. Within a year he had turned the tables on Gingrich and shown the superiority, in strategic political terms, of his position.
Bush won in 2000 by using a similar triangulation technique.
The Conservative Party continued along the Contract line for years and much of the Right still hankers after it. And Gordon Brown appears to have decided that he can't abandon Blairite triangulation even though many of his supporters wish him to.
The Contract v Dick Morris really was one the defining fights of the era.
Honeymoons are hilarious.
Political honeymoons I mean.
The smallest, often banal, act is portrayed as an example of great statesmanship. Gordon Brown was right to return from his holiday, because the current atmosphere guaranteed that it would be portrayed as strong leadership. But it's hardly the first time a leader has enjoyed such a breathing space.
Here are five great honeymoons:
1. John Major eats chips! The decision of the new Prime Minister to dine in a Happy Eater restaurant was regarded as an indication that here was a man of the people. Within a couple of years the same meal was being satirised on Spitting Image and taken as an indication that the man had no style.
2. David Cameron can ride a bicycle! The miraculous ability of the new Tory leader to travel on a bike without wobbling was seen as an indication that Conservative revival might be possible. Look everyone, no hands. The man can pedal. The Tories are saved.
3. Tony Blair meets Noel Gallagher! It should never be forgotten that there was a period in which Cool Britannia was taken seriously. It was thought, well, cool. And an electoral asset. Now it is impossible to talk about it without people laughing.
4. George Bush is kinder and gentler! When the current President's father talked of a kinder America his popularity soared. He was regarded as so unbeatable that leading Democrats shied away from standing against him - they thought they would get crushed. By the time the election came round it was Bush who was crushed. And part of his problem was that voters thought him a wimp.
5. Bill Clinton delivers his inaugural address! A fresh young President speaks and the nation is ready for something new. But within moments of taking office, the honeymoon is over. The decision, later partially reversed, to allow gays to join the military became public within days of the inaugural and that was it for the Clinton honeymoon. It was regarded as a great political mistake but its effects did not last - he still won in a walk next time, though.
Reading Alastair Campbell's (incidentally, compelling and personally honest) diaries it occurred to me that it is possible to work out (or at least, guess) just where the excisions have been made to save Gordon Brown's blushes.
So, for example, isn't it odd that Mr Brown is scarcely mentioned during the discussion on Clause IV? What was his view? Was there something he said or did that Alastair felt was better left out?
And here's an even more interesting one - the independence of the Bank of England. I've heard it said before, that knowledgeable insiders insist that independence was Blair's idea not Brown's and that the latter needed to be persuaded.
Now look at Campbell's account. The moment when the decision was announced is covered in detail, but there is very little, suspiciously little, about the origin of the idea and the discussion of it. And none at all about Mr Brown's view. Why?
On Friday May 12th (Page 60) Campbell says: TB and I discussed the need for a proper plan and strategy re the Bank of England. He was sure independence was the answer.
Then on January 25th 1997 he writes: TB said to me that the way to really do in the Tories was to announce during the campaign that we would make the Bank of England independent.
The next time the issue is mentioned is when it happened. So, the first time it came up, it was felt worthy of inclusion in the diary and in the book, yet Mr Brown is not mentioned. The diary is silent on his role. Very odd.
If independence originally came from Blair this would substantially challenge the conventional view of Brown's tenure as Chancellor, particularly if Brown needed to be persuaded.
Perhaps it was a Brown initiative after all, but if so it is, let me put it this way, a shame Alastair didn't feel he had room to give us a little bit more about how the whole thing came about.
Time for a proper history of this policy I think.
 I promise you this is true: Edward Duncan Smith, son of former conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith is set to cross over political sides this summer when he takes on the role of Alistair Campbell in the premiere of the new musical Tony! The Blair Musical at York Theatre Royal from 18-21 July.
 Anatole Kaletsky's column this morning describes the new Chancellor's interview with the Financial Times as a "genuine surprise" and an important one. He thinks it puts to rest the idea that Prime Minister is going to head off to the left.
So I thought I'd link to the full transcript of the encounter, which is now available online.
There is a spectacular attack on Tony Blair tucked away in the middle: It is a pleasure that the Cabinet now is actually so much more businesslike today than what I’ve experienced for the last ten years.
Ouch.
Just a little experiment. Everyone's been commenting on how much the last decade has aged Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. But is this standard for men of their age? Or is it their tough jobs and the cares of office?
So here's some pictures to help make a comparison. First we have Tony Blair, born in 1953 and his contemporaries Peter Mandelson, Griff Rhys-Jones and Graeme Souness. On the left are these four gentlemen in 1997 and on the right we see them today.
Then we have our new Prime Minister, born in 1951, the same year as saw the birth of Sir Bob Geldof, Kevin Keegan and Anthony Worral Thompson.
I'd say that it seems like you age a lot in a decade and not that much more if you go into politics.
Tony Blair
Peter Mandelson
Griff Rhys-Jones
Graeme Souness
Gordon Brown
Sir Bob Geldof
Kevin Keegan
Anthony Worrall Thompson
My favourite moment at PMQs came when Lib Dem MP Richard Younger Ross (not a candidate for a Government of all the talents) asked a long, boring, pointless and complicated question about the relationship between church and state. Mr Blair rose, paused for a moment or two and then said: I think I’m really not bothered about that one
and sat down.
I bet this idea came up as someone's joke during PMQ prep and then, as he was standing up, he thought what the hell.
Tony Blair has often being King in the House of Commons. The key is that he finds the very best arguments to advance his position. When the arguments aren't there he is miserable.
But today, when the statement on the European summit was being debated, he managed to be relaxed and strong while completely blathering. It was the reverse of his usual method - there was wit but no attempt at an argument at all.
He still hasn't properly explained how he could have agreed to a referendum before the election and is withdrawing his promise now.
The one argument that he could have deployed - that there is now an opt out from the Charter of Fundamental Rights - looks very ropey.
Here is the Financial Times leader column this morning: Mr Blair tried to prevent the charter on fundamental rights from being made legally binding. He failed. But he has won a lengthy protocol insisting that it cannot be used to challenge UK laws: in effect, it is another opt-out. It may not be legally enforceable, for it discriminates in the application of fundamental rights
Have you seen this? Simon Schama and Tony “missing you already” Blair give us a tour around Downing Street.
Now I had my suspicions over what seems to be a government-commissioned documentary – my propaganda radar is on high alert - but this is genuinely interesting.
The alpha-male interaction between Schama and Blair made me chuckle. Schama clearly thinks he can teach the PM a thing or two about his predecessors, but Blair’s having none of it. It’s all very David Brent and Gareth from The Office, only with higher brows.
Have a watch. And if you like it, you can also watch part 2, part 3 and part 4 too.
Murad Ahmed
Mr Blair and Mr Brown argue that they will not need to have a referendum as long as their "red lines" are not crossed.
But it is not as simple as that.
The language dealing with opt outs and so-called red lines will be complicated. The question of whether the red lines have been crossed will be one of judgement. And a referendum would be justified for that reason alone.
Here's Margaret Thatcher entering Downing Street.
And here's Tony Blair entering Downing Street. Has anyone got the perfect little speech for Gordon Brown when he goes through the front door?
I love it when a writer puts their finger right on it. That's what Andrew Gimson did this morning describing the Prime Minister's style of dealing with press questions: Mr Blair's "openness" is nothing of the kind. When confronted by the wild dogs of the press, he makes a great show of emptying his pockets, safe in the knowledge that he has already hidden his money in his shoe.
Brilliant.
Tony Blair's speech on the media contains some interesting thoughts, although he doesn't reflect long enough on the contribution of his own media operation to the problems that he outlines.
I was struck, however, by one sentence. It comes when he is describing the idea of a two day cabinet as risible nowadays because: You can't let speculation stay out there for longer than an instant.
Why?
Obviously, his reply would be that the resulting coverage would be awful. But does this matter? Nowhere near as much as he thinks it does.
This was the key sentence in the entire speech, because interesting though it was, it shows a weakness in Mr Blair - a tendency to take one's own press cuttings too seriously.
 Just in case you care about the publication of Alastair Campbell’s diaries (I admit it, it’s on my Amazon list), you might be interested in his “diary of a diary”, a series of articles that he’ll be writing before the publication of his memoirs, about the publication of his memoirs, to promote the publication of his memoirs.
His first entry was published today, and has the following stunning revelations:
Alastair Campbell prefers writing longhand to typing: I am basically a pen and ink person. There is something more intimate, more satisfying, about sitting down with pen and paper to record your thoughts than banging away at a keyboard.
He reserves the right to criticise Tony Blair: it is a diary, not a paeon [sic] of praise.
Alastair Campbell’s diaries are pretty long, but won’t have a lot about his dealings with the media (you know, the day
job)… The biggest cuts of all were made by me and my editor, Richard Stott, before I took it to the Cabinet Office, as we went from more than 2 million words to around 350,000 – still a very large book, well over 700 pages, with a very long index, which is still in preparation.
I think people will be surprised – as indeed I have been – at how little has survived about my day to day engagement with the media.
…but the media is to blame for most things: It has been a constant theme of mine over the past decade that much of the modern media distorts the real process of politics.
He is all about the full and complete truth of politics: I hope and believe that a diary, even an edited one like mine, presents a fuller and more complete truth about politics, and about Tony Blair, than many other accounts are able to.
Alastair Campbell just can’t wait: Of course I could have waited. But judgements about TB are being made now. Analysis is instant, comment permanent.
And he should have started earlier so we could have got more details on revelations like this: In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the occasional articles and diary entries I put up here. If only I had started a few days earlier, I could have told you all about my 50th birthday last week, going with my partner Fiona to see Mick Hucknall at the Albert Hall; then with my sons to see the golf at Wentworth at the weekend, not to mention the speech I made at the Foreign Office on Tuesday at an event to promote the work of educational charity Shine.
Juicy stuff. So don’t forget. Alastair Campbell’s Diaries. The Blair Years. July 9th. The political event of the year.
Murad Ahmed
 What should Americans expect from Gordon Brown? Who knows? The Left’s dislike of George Bush is so intense that Mr Brown will be under pressure to distance himself at least from this incumbent.
But it would be a mistake to see Brown as less pro-American than Tony Blair. Brown loves America. It wouldn’t be putting it too strongly to see that our next Prime Minister is obsessed with the United States.
Here are five reasons why Brown is more American than Blair:
1. He is far better read on American politics. Brown likes to spend his leisure time with his nose in the Lyndon Johnson biography by Robert Caro, or reading the speeches of Robert Kennedy.
2. He is more heavily influenced by the neo-cons. Tony Blair has been called a neo-con because he believes in spreading democracy across the globe. But it is Brown who is steeped in the writings of people such as Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb. In a brilliant column in the Daily Telegraph, a year or so back, Rachel Sylvester showed how Brown’s domestic agenda has been shaped by neo-conservative thinking.
3. He holidays in America. Almost every summer, Britain’s Prime Minister elect can be found in Cape Cod, a choice which indicates a cultural affinity. Tony Blair does not usually holiday in the United States.
4. He has Bob Shrum in his inner circle. This may suggest other political problems, but indicates his familiarity with the world of American politics. Brown has a network of contacts in the Democratic Party that easily rivals Blair.
5. He initiated the links with the Clinton team. The first contact between thinkers at the Democratic Leadership Council and the New Labour group came when Gordon Brown was the senior partner in the Brown-Blair duo. Brown’s trademark welfare and work policies were heavily influenced by the thinking of writers like Mickey Kaus. Brown’s tax credit policy is based on the earned income tax credit.
 1. Will Marshall. In 1992, the President of the Progressive Policy Institute was visited by two young British Labour politicians. One of them was Gordon Brown, he forgot the name of the other.
But the impact on Blair of Marshall and his colleagues in the Democratic Leadership Council was greater. Brown and Blair were visiting to get tips from Clinton associates. The PPI was one of the most fruitful sources. Their working papers helped new Labour get started on a new policy agenda - with a Centre Right bent.
The identity of thinking became so great that Marshall now says that the balance of intellectual payments has changed and that the Democrats are drawing from new Labour. Blair became a new Southern Democrat.
 2. Bill Clinton. The election of Clinton profoundly altered Blair and his associates. Philip Gould, Blair's pollster and one of the biggest influences upon him, spent time working on the campaign and absorbed its lessons.
Clinton changed Blair in three ways. First, the Blairites copied Clinton’s "War Room" and began combating the Tories in every news cycle. Second, Tony Blair learned from Clinton's immensely effective rhetorical style. He too began to feel the pain of the middle class. And finally, Clinton's failings hardened Blair. He reacted against the criticism that Clinton avoided hard choices by becoming harder himself. This trait first showed itself during the Kosovo conflict.
 3. Rupert Murdoch. Your estimation of the influence of the proprietor of The Sun and The Times on the Prime Minister depends very much on what you think of Tony Blair. Do you think that his politics are on the Centre Right anyway or do you believe that he moved to the Right simply to win the support of the tabloid press? Perhaps it's a bit more complicated than that. Mr Blair provided his own assessment of the relationship last summer in a speech to a gathering of News Corp executives:
Rupert, it’s great to be back at the News Corp conference after all these years. When I first met you, I wasn’t sure I liked you, but I feared you. Now that my days of fighting elections are over, I don’t actually fear you, but I do like you.
This captures perfectly the way Blair has changed during his period in office - what he may have started out doing through necessity, he ended up doing though conviction.
 4. Dick Morris. When Bill Clinton was choosing his holiday destination, he turned to his pollster for advice. He ended up in Wyoming. The obsessive use of focus group polling became part of Tony Blair's working method too.
In his book, Behind the Oval Office, about his work for Clinton, Morris set out his methods for developing policy. Morris suggests neutralising the Right on their strong issues - crime and the economy - leaving them to fight where they are weak - education, the environment and so on. Blair followed Morris's methods and ideas very closely.
In fact, Behind the Oval Office, written as a memoir of Morris’s time advising Clinton, remains one of the best texts on Blair's political methods.
 5. George W. Bush. The partnership of Bush and Blair, the linking of their names in the public imagination, is an unlikely one. It happened because of Tony Blair's natural liberal interventionism and his view of the importance of the "special relationship". If George Bush had not chosen to invade Iraq, Tony Blair almost certainly would not have advocated doing so. But once the US President had made up his mind to proceed, the British prime minister was never going to allow the Americans to act alone.
Acting together with George Bush has changed Tony Blair in two ways - it has reinforced his interventionist instincts, making that a more prominent part of his political make-up; and it has made him a harder, more ideological politician. He became less reliant on popularity, less concerned about it. And lucky for him that he did, since at the same time he also became a great deal less popular.
 Some headlines, opinion pieces and thoughts from around the world.
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial: Britain After Blair - Who is Gordon Brown? After more than 10 years at 10 Downing Street, he will leave behind a Britain that has bolstered its standing in Europe, solidified its role as one of America's closest allies and built London into a global financial hub. His Labour successor will be hard-pressed to do as well.
Kevin Sullivan in Washington Post: Briton's decade of achievements dimmed by embrace of Bush and Iraq War At the same time, those who know Blair well said he believes that Britain is best served by a prime minister who keeps an airtight relationship with the U.S. president and stays "inside the tent" with him to influence policy. He established such a close relationship with President Bill Clinton that many American observers were surprised when he hit it off so quickly with Bush, Clinton's political opposite. But Blair was just being consistent.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft in Slate: Why do Brits dislike Tony Blair? Although the religious faith worn on his sleeve would seem normal enough in an American politician, it's perplexing in a country where Church of England services are now attended by less than 2 percent of the population, but even that seemed at least authentic.
Alan Cowell in International Herald Tribune: Brown about to take over in Britain - but who is he? Brown's manner is far from the silver-tongued smoothness of Blair, once nicknamed Teflon Tony. Indeed, with somewhat faint praise, Blair has likened his successor to "a great clunking fist" of a politician who will lead Labour into battle against the polished Conservative leader, David Cameron.
A. N. Wilson in the New York Times: A player who never found his stage Being a man of quick though skin-deep intelligence, Mr. Blair found out very quickly that there are in fact fewer and fewer areas over which British politicians, perhaps any politicians, have control in today’s world.
Tony Blair's government has changed this country fundamentally. Mass immigration, gay rights, independence of the Bank of England, devolution, our interventionist foreign policy doctrine, an uncertain future for our relationship with the United States - Britain is very different as a result of this Prime Minister's tenure.
But is it right to assess Mr Blair by looking at what he changed? Perhaps his greatest achievement is what he didn't change.
It is often regarded as Mr Blair's failing that with such a large majority he altered so little. And I certainly concur that his reform, say, of public services was disappointing and that bureaucracy and regulation has grown due as much to sins of omission as to sins of commission.
Yet this failing has its good side, too. Tony Blair has been a moderate Prime Minister. He has presided over a period of stability. This morning Mary Ann Sieghart rather astutely compared him to Harold Macmillan.
Gerard Baker wrote a brilliant column earlier this year about the era we now live in. Forget Mr Blair's claims to have been a radical Prime minister. I think he will be forever associated with the Great Moderation.
 I think it is time for Comment Central readers to offer Tony Blair some assistance. He will shortly be sitting down to write his memoirs. He'll have, ahem, some help with his recollections I'm sure. But the really difficult bit will be thinking up a title.
So I am launching a competition - the person who dreams up the best title for Mr Blair's autobiography wins.
Here are some thoughts, to show you what I mean:
- The Hand of History
- Pretty Straight Sorta Guy
- Who's Hoon? The story of my Government
- The Art of the Plausible
- The John Humphries Years - My role in them
Anyway, you get the idea. Put your entries in the comments section or click here.
You probably will have heard of this, but like me you might have missed it. So I though I would post it here.
The Blair policy review on public services, while on the whole not bad at all, contains this: 6.22 Though payment by results is often appropriate when funding institutions (such as schools or hospitals), in other service areas it will be most appropriate to give individual users’ budgets with which to make their own decisions
Why? Why is a school an "institution" that can't be funded by user choice? Look though I did, there was no explanation.
Has Tony Blair shown the way forward for a future minority Government? It is always assumed that in a hung Parliament the largest party would either conclude a formal deal with the Liberals or would have to produce a programme that the Liberals would find hard to vote down.
But on three occasions now, Mr Blair has relied on a differently composed majority to sustain his Government - one that unites the centre against the fringes.
Could a minority Government work in a similar way? A cleverly produced Queens Speech could challenge a centrist leader of the Opposition to support the Government or risk being seen as obstructive and opportunist. The Opposition leader might fear the consequences of bringing down the Government on a measure they actually support.
The middle against both ends? It could happen.
In April 1997, during the General Election campaign, Robert Harris wrote in the Sunday Times this prescient piece on Tony Blair. I was struck by it at the time and think it greatly repays reading in the light of Tony Blair's interview this morning.
I couldn't find a link to it, so I've pasted the whole thing here: There is a famous story about Evelyn Waugh, who was once approached by a blue-rinsed matron - a fan of Brideshead Revisited - during a visit to the United States. "Oh Mr Waugh," she gushed, "I just love your novels." To which Waugh is said to have replied, with characteristic brutality, that he used to think they were pretty good himself, but that now he knew that someone as vulgar and repulsive as she enjoyed them, he was no longer quite so sure.
I occasionally think of this remark when I read accounts of the latest convert to the cause of Tony Blair. I have always thought Mr Blair was pretty good myself; I still do, for that matter. But now I know that, say, Paul Johnson likes him, or the editor of The Sun, I find myself wondering: how can this be? Are they seeing something I'm missing? By what piece of political alchemy do we now suddenly find ourselves on the same side?
 The answer, of course, is that Mr Blair is a consummate politician - I would say the most brilliant I have seen in operation at close quarters - with an astonishing ability to adapt himself to his audience of the moment. There are four principal arenas in which a modern statesman has to perform: in the Commons chamber, on television, in committee or cabinet, and on the platform at a big rally or party conference. Usually a successful politician is outstandingly good at one or two or - very rarely - three of these. Blair is the only one I can think of who scores an alpha in all four.
And what, in essence, is the secret of all great oratory, of all performance? It is, surely, to connect: to establish a rapport, however briefly, between the speaker and the individual member of the audience; to find that zone of common ground on which two consciousnesses can meet. Mr Blair, as everybody knows, is a man of a strong Christian faith, and it seems to me that the importance of this in his make-up can hardly be overemphasised. He has the good Christian's instinctive yearning for inclusivity. No member of the flock, however errant, should ever be turned away. He wants to bring us all in - you and me and Paul Johnson and The Sun and Paddy Ashdown and Alan Howarth and the CBI and the TUC - bring us all in - hallelujah! - because we all have so much in common.
Here lie both the strength and weakness of the new Labour project. The strength is visible every day in every opinion poll. People clearly like this kind of thing. They want to believe in common values. And so, out of a party that seemed five years ago to be on the wrong side of every demographic, cultural and economic trend, Mr Blair has fashioned a movement that does appear to be genuinely vibrant, national and non-sectarian. Few people, reading Labour's manifesto, will not find something that strikes a chord.
The weakness, however, is equally evident. "I defy anyone to say that this is anything other than a radical programme," declared Mr Blair last Thursday, before adding: "It's in the radical centre." The radical centre? What does this phrase mean? What can it mean? Radicals must surely flank the centre, not be at the centre, because a centrist - almost by definition - is someone who rejects the lurches of radicalism.
This is quite close to double-speak - a phenomenon which, as Orwell taught us, leads us on by smooth degrees to double-think. So Labour is now, apparently, both in favour of a free vote on hunting, but not in favour of holding that vote in the foreseeable future. It is utterly opposed to the 11-plus, but in favour of keeping existing grammar schools because, in Mr Blair's words, "they're good schools". (Which begs the question: if they're such good schools, why not allow a few more of them?) Labour wants a Scottish assembly, but not, it seems, one with much more power than an English parish council. It wants to lead in Europe, but not in the direction which most of Europe clearly wants to go in - that is, towards a single currency - but wherever the most domestic votes are to be found. On a personal level, Mr Blair professes himself to be most at ease both in the country and, to a different audience, in the town.
 There are uneasy parallels here with Richard Nixon - the "new" Nixon, that is, of the 1968 presidential campaign - who developed a clever technique of appealing to two utterly opposed factions in a single sentence. Thus he was in favour of maintaining American military strength in Vietnam, and also of negotiating a peace settlement - a typically "inclusive" answer which led to a memorable parody by Norman Mailer ("While homosexuality is a perversion punishable by law, and an intolerable offence to a law-abiding community, it is life-giving to many of those who are in need of it...")
I am not saying that Mr Blair is a politician like Nixon. Far from it. Indeed, I'm not even arguing that the queasy, see-sawing rhetoric of new Labour is necessarily motivated purely by electoral expediency. What is happening is more interesting than that. Mr Blair is a genuine believer in inclusivity. He believes that a liberal agnostic and a Catholic reactionary homophobe, a devolutionist and a Unionist, a Europhile and a Eurosceptic - that all these conflicting personalities can, given sufficient goodwill, come together on a patch of shared ground called new Labour; yea, that the fox may even lie down with the hounds.
Politicians have grasped at this chimera before, but none quite as openly or skilfully as Mr Blair. Watching the launch of the Labour manifesto last week, it struck me that this election campaign is actually an eerie echo of that of 1951. Then, as now, the country went to the polls after a period of strong government that had changed society radically. Then, as now, it was a campaign of notable personal bitterness, with Churchill accusing Labour of increasing "the hazard of a world catastrophe" and the Daily Mirror accusing Churchill of wanting to start a nuclear war.
But beneath the campaign rhetoric - then, as now - there was a degree of consensus which the heat of the battle conveniently disguised but which the incoming government tacitly recognised. Churchill didn't repeal all of the Attlee government's work. On the contrary: introducing his legislative programme in the Commons, he declared that "what the nation needs is several years of quiet, steady administration, if only to allow socialist legislation to reach its full fruition". And a couple of months later, he went further, declaring in a radio broadcast that on social services, foreign affairs and defence "nine-tenths of the people agree on nine-tenths of what has been and will be done".
Blair could make virtually the same speech. It is his firm conviction that politics, as a process, solves virtually nothing - that it is, in effect, a part of the problem, preventing men and women of goodwill from joining to tackle the nation's problems. His instincts, his philosophy - indeed, his whole appearance and manner - are resolutely non-sectarian. And this, he believes, is what the country yearns for, too, just as Churchill sensed it did in 1951. "This is our historic opportunity," Blair said on Thursday. "If we blow this opportunity we blow our place in history." His faith in the power of rationality and goodwill is touching, almost naive.
But unless the laws of human nature have been repealed, this Blairite coalition will not endure. It will almost certainly last until polling day. It may have a few months of honeymoon left in it thereafter. But in the long term, on these hard issues - on Europe, devolution, education, even on fox-hunting - someone is bound to end up being disappointed. Churchill, in peacetime, couldn't meld politics into a national crusade. Nor will Blair. We may all be new Labourites now. But which of us, I wonder, will be the first to be disappointed?
The first part of the Prime Minister's Today programme interview, in which he talked about cash for peerages and resignation, will be the one that claims all the attention. The second section, in which he talked about the NHS and (much less convincingly) Home Office matters, is the part he wants us to be interested in.
But me? I liked the last bit. I found his reflections on how he had changed as a man fascinating.
Two thoughts struck me. The first is that the Prime Minister has travelled far beyond New Labour. He talked about his previous belief that he could please all the people and his desire to do so. Now he realises that this isn't possible. He says he regrets that he tried so hard.
Now, this is no small conversion. The possibility of pleasing everyone was central to New Labour's working method and ideology. Abandon this and you're effectively abandoning New Labour.
My second thought is this - we all talk about how fed up we are with the Prime Minister, but at least as important is that he is fed up with us. All of us.
You can almost hear him sighing as he explains, yet again, the answer to another one of our stupid questions or tiresome complaints.
I think he feels he would have made it if it hadn't been for us pesky kids.
I listened again to Tony Blair's performance at Prime Minister's Questions last night, and noticed something that I missed when I watched it the first time. Please forgive me for returning to the topic, but it has to do with one of Mr Blair's favourite arguments against the Conservative Party.
In answer to David Cameron's fifth question Mr Blair said this: We are building 8,000 more prison places, but the investment necessary to do that is investment that he voted against.
This is a standard Blair reply. There are however 3 problems:
1. The prison places are to be built between now and 2012. This means that no one has voted either for or against the money to pay for them.
2. The Government hasn't itself decided exactly how it intends to pay for the extra prison places.
3. And the reason why they have been so undecided is that they have committed themselves to a cash freeze on the Home Office. The funding will therefore come not out of extra "investment" but out of savings and existing contingency funds.
I suppose Mr Blair felt that: We are probably building 8,000 portakabins, which don't require any more spending and he will have the opportunity to vote for it in good time
didn't sound awfully impressive.
When I worked at the Conservative Research Department I used to help respond to Government claims. And I reached the conclusion that whenever it announced an apparently impressive figure, I mean whenever, there was always something wrong with it.
So when I heard Tony Blair claim at Prime Minister's Questions that he was building 8,000 more prison places I knew that all I had to was Google the claim and I'd find out what was wrong with it.
And, sure enough, I found this.
Tony Blair on Ruth Turner 2007: Ruth is a person of the highest integrity for whom I have great regard and I continue to have complete confidence in her
William Hague on Jeffrey Archer 1999: This candidate is a candidate of probity and intergity - I am going to back him to the hilt
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I feel like a bit of a chump.
