Tony blair

I’ve already mentioned George Osborne’s interview with the Telegraph, but it certainly merits another. As Ben Brogan says, Osborne is in a rich vein of ‘election that never was’ form. As befits the inveterate schemer, Osborne’s tactical grasp is impressive. He is quietly vociferous about Labour’s ‘historic mistake’ in electing Ed Miliband. Revealing senior Tories’ continued respect for the electoral tenets of Blairism, he says: "They have chosen to move off the historic centre ground of British politics. I've seen more pictures of Neil Kinnock on television in the past week than I've seen in 20 years. That's old politics.

Forget Ed Miliband’s promise of ‘optimism’ - a mantra that became so repetitive it had me reaching for the Scotch and revolver. Philip Collins has delivered a far more cutting verdict on David Cameron’s obsession with austerity. He writes (£): ‘Conservatives such David Cameron are not philosophers. The question to ask of Mr Cameron is not: what does he believe? It is: what problems does he inherit? Mr Cameron really does just want to fix the roof. The reason he wants to fix the roof is because it’s broken. The value he brings to this task is the insight that it is better to be dry than wet. He’s simple like that.

With the merry dance of shadow cabinet elections upon us, it's a good time to look back on the last time Labour went through all this. There's a useful list of all the results from the 1992 Parliament here, but here's my summary of some of the more eyecatching outcomes: 1) Gordon Brown, from hero to zero (to Chancellor). In 1992, Gordon Brown came top of the shadow Cabinet rankings. By 1996, he had dropped to 14th. And bear in mind that the number of MPs standing fell from 53 to 26 over the same time. As we all know, though, he still made it to the Chancellorship.   2) Blair less popular than Prescott.

David Miliband is a tease. The speech he just gave was one of his best: it was self-deprecating, had gravitas, humour, and he spoke down to the Tories, telling William Hague what statesmanship was about. A monstrous conceit, CoffeeHousers may argue, but a Labour leader needs a bit of that; to make out that he's the real leader-in-waiting, up against lightweights. There was his trademark little bit of grit in the speech: he praised the troops, the Afghan mission and criticised Cameron for reducing British diplomacy to trade missions (Con Coughlin made the same point in a Spectator cover piece recently). My point: that this was a measurably better speech than the one his little brother made on Saturday. And I'll bet it's better than the speech Red Ed will make tomorrow.

A double hit from the Spectator archives, this week, in recognition of events in Labour land. The first is a recent piece, by Andrew Gilligan, on why the battle between Ken and Oona – now resolved, of course – is the real battle for Labour’s soul. And the second is Boris’s take on Blair’s election to the Labour leadership back in 1994. Enjoy, as they say. The real battle for Labour’s soul, Andrew Gilligan, The Spectator, 11 September 2010 This summer’s election to choose a new deputy regional sales manager of the Co-op, sorry, a new leader of the Labour party, has rather obviously failed to set the nation on fire.

The images from inside Westminster Hall right now: Captions please...

Let’s face it. This wasn’t a classic. Today’s PMQs featured a duel of the deputies. Nick Clegg, who leads part of the government, faced Jack Straw who’s so far from leading anything that he isn’t even a candidate in the race to head his currently driverless party. Unfortunately, Mr Straw had left all his good questions at home. He had to improvise at the last moment. Andy Coulson was all he could think of. He asked if Nick Clegg ‘was entirely satisfied’ that Coulson knew nothing about phone-tapping while he was editor of the News of the World. The only thing Nick Clegg is entirely satisfied with is himself and he fended off Straw’s feeble attacks by saying, effectively, ‘oh we’ve phoned the police so just shut up.

Mr Blair’s former breathless lover will form the fully staffed Gordon and Sarah Brown Foundation, paid for by lucrative speaking engagements, which the Spectator revealed some weeks ago. He has accepted three pro-bono appointments - joining Queen Rania of Jordan’s Global Campaign for Education, working on a new programme to bring the internet to Africa and joining the board of Tim Berners Lee's World Wide Web Foundation. He will also continue to write on the plight of the world’s poor. Presumably, he won’t now be seeking a spot at the Shadow Cabinet table. Like Blair, Brown’s ambitions are global. I can’t criticise Brown for any of this – they are all worthy causes close to Brown’s heart.

Say what you like about Blair, but he is something of a political entrepreneur. He detects a gap in the market and fills it: he did with New Labour in the mid-1990s. And he detects a trend in the globalised world: a system where governments don't matter so much and power is held by a global elite. This, CoffeeHousers, is what he's up to with his memoirs. He is presenting himself in new incarnation, a statesman without a state, able to move without being tied down to an electorate. There's a very revealing passage in his book where he talks about Condi Rice: “She is a classic example of the absurdity of people with experience and capacity at the highest level not having big political jobs after retirement from office,” he writes.