Peter Oborne

Next month’s local elections will be a grave test of the Prime Minister’s authority. Peter Oborne goes on the stump with BNP campaigners who believe they are heading for great gains — and Labour politicians who fear they are right Phil is wearing an England football shirt. He lives in a quiet crescent in central Dagenham. He’s shaven-headed and has two small children. He regrets voting for Margaret Thatcher: ‘She lost me my business, she did.’ In 1997 Mark moved to Tony Blair. Next month he will switch again, with immense enthusiasm, to the British National Party. ‘I want to make a statement about what’s going on,’ he states. ‘Half the world is getting dumped round here. I’m a retailer. I work 50 to 60 hours a week.

In 15 years of covering domestic politics I have never reported on anything half as sordid as Tuesday’s meeting between Tony Blair and David Cameron in the Prime Minister’s L-shaped Commons office. Afterwards David Cameron took it upon himself to issue the standard Blairite defence of the recent scandals: ‘We have a relatively uncorrupt party system but we do have a party funding system that is in a mess.’ Charlie Falconer, the Prime Minister’s chief apologist during the funding scandal, couldn’t have put it better. A spokesman for the Tory party indicated that the occasion was forward-looking, asserting that it was held to discuss looming reforms of party funding. But this claim made no sense. If true, there would have been no need for privacy.

Shortly before setting off on his Australian and Far Eastern tour, Tony Blair had a long discussion with Gordon Brown about the succession. The Chancellor was extremely clear. ‘Brown wanted a handover date by the end of the year,’ says my source, ‘with Brown coming in around the time of the party conference and Blair going out. It was all to be settled by conference.’ This conversation went into the intricate detail concerning the various constitutional and party mechanisms which need to be brought into play to secure a smooth succession. The role of John Prescott was raised. Brown wants Prescott to stay on as Deputy Prime Minister at least for a short time after the changeover of power, but to step down as deputy party leader.

Close friends of the Prime Minister say that he knows that the cash for peerages crisis goes very deep, and may even finish him off. But they insist that he is ‘determined to fight on, if at all possible’. In the face of formidable evidence to the contrary, the Prime Minister still believes that he is the indispensable man. He was at it again on Tuesday, making a major speech, the first of a series of three, setting out his vision of foreign affairs. Tony Blair is enormously proud of what he has achieved on the international stage. He is sure that he has set a new tone for British foreign entanglements, as Gladstone did in the 1870s.

Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet secretary, has been obliged to deal with a considerable volume of intricate business in the course of his brilliant Whitehall career. When he was John Major’s press secretary in the mid-1990s Sir Gus was obliged to familiarise himself repeatedly with the private lives of Tory ministers and MPs. As a senior Treasury official under Gordon Brown he was forced to master the yet more perverse and arcane subject of working family tax credits. Yet nothing can have prepared Sir Gus for the complexity of his investigation into David Mills, husband of the Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell. The ministerial code is clear. It states that ministers should declare any gifts to family members.

Peter Oborne says that Gordon Brown’s utterances on terrorism and ID cards indicate that he now sees himself as prime minister in all but name It has finally become accepted both in the inner Blair circle and the wider Labour movement that Gordon Brown will inevitably be the next prime minister and must be treated as such. The Chancellor would be the first modern prime minister not to have a driving licence, and the first intellectual in Downing Street since A.J. Balfour surrendered office in 1905. No previous prime minister has been able to boast a doctorate. The substantive concession of power took place on Monday. Tony Blair was stranded in South Africa unable to attend the 100th anniversary meeting of the parliamentary Labour party, where he was due to speak.

David Cameron has ruthlessly dumped Tory baggage on almost every pressing issue: tax, the economy, the environment, health, education, welfare, the legacy of Margaret Thatcher. There is, however, one exception. On foreign policy he has moved surprisingly sharply to the Right. In Europe he has broken with the centrist EPP and placed Conservatives uncomfortably alongside a miscellaneous collection on the semi-fascist fringe. More notable still, David Cameron’s Tory party is moving fast to improve links with the White House and the Republican party. Domestically, David Cameron may have felt moved to renounce Margaret Thatcher. But internationally, he is sucking up to George Bush.

Almost without exception Tony Blair’s Cabinet reshuffles have been a shambles, sometimes descending into farce. The reshuffle that followed the 2001 general election was a case in point. Decisions were delayed and a major reorganisation of Whitehall put on hold as Blair was locked in his study having a shouting match with Cherie. In the anteroom senior officials hung around listlessly, too embarrassed to barge in, awaiting instructions that failed to arrive. Two years later, matters got worse. The Prime Minister, without consulting officials, abolished the ancient office of Lord Chancellor. The decision had to be embarrassingly rescinded as it emerged that this could not be put into effect without primary legislation.

I had resolved on no account whatever to return to the theme of the Tory leader, David Cameron, this week. Other issues looked more pressing. The decision by Liberal Democrat MPs to destroy Charles Kennedy only months after he had led them to their most impressive general election result in three quarters of a century is an instance of black ingratitude with few parallels in recent political history. It cries out for an explanation. Kennedy does not merely deserve some credit for his electoral success.

The most unexpected characteristic so far of the Cameron leadership of the Conservative party is caution. Westminster had been braced for some kind of spectacular announcement, or perhaps a series of announcements, signalling dramatic change. This has not been forthcoming. The day Cameron got elected a friend of mine rang up. ‘It’s all up,’ he said. ‘It’s finished.’ ‘Surely Cameron isn’t as bad as all that,’ I replied. ‘I don’t mean Dave,’ he said. ‘I mean me. I’ll never get a seat now.’ My friend is a white, middle-class male in his late thirties.

At the heart of David Cameron’s project for the Tory party is admiration for Tony Blair: his techniques, style, language and persona- lity cult. This reverence for the Prime Minister extends far beyond mere form to embrace substantial policy issues. It is well known that David Cameron agrees with Tony Blair’s insights into public-service reform, while insisting that he could apply them with greater courage and forcefulness. The resulting pledge to support next year’s Education Bill has been greeted with hostility from Cameron’s leadership rival David Davis: so much so that it is now hard to see how Davis could fit at all comfortably into the front-bench team Cameron will form after his inevitable victory on 6 December.