Peter Oborne

We have entered an equivocal and shiftless passage in British politics. Tony Blair is in the situation of a relegated football club towards the end of the season. He is going down, and there is a zero statistical chance that he can survive. He lingers at top table, but has reached the stage where even victories cannot save him. David Cameron finds himself in exactly the opposite position. Formally, he is still a mere contender. But the issue is in practice decided. This means that Cameron no longer needs to use the two-and-a-half remaining weeks of campaigning to secure votes. The imperative need is rather to work out strategies for the moment he officially becomes Opposition leader on the afternoon of 6 December.

No prime minister, with the debatable exception of Anthony Eden, has been held in such low private esteem by senior civil servants as Tony Blair. Cabinet secretaries Robin Butler and Richard Wilson have delivered withering public verdicts on the slipshod way government now conducts its business. So have senior officials like Michael Quinlan and former ambassadors like Rodric Braithwaite. Meanwhile Downing Street has fostered a novel species of accommodating officials. The DTI permanent secretary Robin Young, rather too happy to engage in Blairite political intrigue, is one. Jeremy Heywood, the Downing Street private secretary who adapted so readily to Tony Blair’s sofa government, is another.

MPs returned to Westminster this week during a spell of hot, sultry weather more characteristic of late July than mid-October. They sweated up in the corridors, mopped their brows in the chamber, sat in shirtsleeves on the Commons terrace (apart from the Liberal Democrats, who at first did not return at all; the recall of Parliament at the end of a 10-week break was a therapeutic ‘away day’ for party spokesmen. To be fair to Charles Kennedy, his absence was barely discernible). Tony Blair added to this troubling sense of unreality. President Talebani of Iraq has been in town.

Despite well-meaning efforts by Francis Maude, Theresa May and Alan Duncan to cast a pall over the occasion, Blackpool 2005 turned out to be the most life-enhancing Tory party conference in recent years. With 6,000 members present, it provided a pleasing reminder that vigour and enthusiasm survive among the grass-roots. Meanwhile, a series of outstanding speeches from the platform demonstrates the remarkable depth of talent within the parliamentary party. The first revelation was awesome: David Cameron. Every so often in British politics a star is born, and this happened last week. There has always been much to like about Cameron.

The annual party conference has been the occasion of the destruction of a Conservative leader, Iain Duncan Smith, within very recent history. But more than 40 years have passed since a leader was last created at a conference. That was back in 1963, also in Blackpool. Representatives had already gathered when news came through that the prime minister, Harold Macmillan, was severely ill and had determined to stand down. It was far too late to bring events to a halt. The conference went on but ceased to be the well-ordered and deferential affair beloved of party managers. On the contrary, as Quintin Hogg at once spotted, this was a hustings. Hogg had recently returned from the United States where he had made a study of the techniques pioneered by John F. Kennedy’s Democrats.

The weeks since the death of Robin Cook have seen an unwholesome squabble concerning who will inherit the ‘legacy’ of the former foreign secretary. Chancellor Gordon Brown made an instant smash-and-grab raid, while allies of the Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain have been furtively suggesting that he is the true inheritor. There is a respectable case to be made, however, that the backbencher John Denham is the only mainstream Labour politician who has a legitimate claim to step into Robin Cook’s shoes. Denham’s resignation on the eve of the Iraq war was rather more courageous even than Robin Cook’s, because he had far more to lose. Denham was on the way up.

At the worst moment in Labour party fortunes, some point in the mid-1980s, a Labour politician is said to have emerged from yet another resounding election defeat unrepentant, declaring: there must be no compromise with the electorate. There was something admirable about this remark. The politician who uttered the phrase had doubtless entered politics to espouse the causes he or she passionately believed in — socialism in one country, nuclear disarmament, ownership of the means of production, etc. The fact that the complacent and inert masses of the British people refused to entertain these Marxist insights was no reason to think again. This state of mind was not conducive to political success. There are analogies with the Conservative party since its landslide defeat in 1997.

Peter Oborne says that Ken Clarke’s leadership bid comes at a time of almost unprecedented anger and chaos in Westminster and the constituencies The Prime Minister faced a number of grave problems on his return from his Caribbean holiday this week: the collapse of his policy in Iraq, a sharp downturn in the British economy, a looming funding crisis in the health service. However, one ingredient was entirely missing: political opposition. Charles Kennedy, leader of the Liberal Democrats, is apparently in a state of hibernation, while the Tories have turned in on themselves. They are unable to make more than a perfunctory contribution to public debate, and this lamentable state of affairs will continue until they elect a new leader.

August has been a very bad month for Tony Blair. A mood of surly, pettish despair has overtaken the Labour party. Ministers, protected by official cars and red boxes, are scarcely aware of this. But it is out there, palpable and menacing. New Labour has reached a dead end, and nobody knows what to say or do. The government’s foreign policy is not far from collapse, though this too is not yet apparent to ministers. The Defence Secretary John Reid wrote an article in the Times last week which attacked the press for its failure to celebrate the many successes of the Iraqi invasion. Dr Reid’s article was not that distant in tone from Vice-President Cheney’s remarkable recent announcement that the insurgency is on its last legs.

Ken Clarke is going to stand for the leadership of the Conservative party. That is the hard, hot, agenda-changing news here in Westminster as the third week in August stretches to its sultry close. One word of caution must accompany this disclosure. Clarke will stand only if proposed changes to the Tory leadership rules, due to be ratified at a meeting of a ‘constitutional college’ on 27 September, are voted through. It is intended that this meeting will take the power to elect the leader away from the party membership and give it back to MPs. Ken Clarke remembers how he enjoyed a majority among his parliamentary colleagues back in 2001 but was nevertheless heavily defeated by the membership. He has told friends that he feels little enthusiasm for repeating that experience.

For security reasons newspapers have been asked not to name the holiday destination to which Tony Blair departed last weekend. This is fair enough, but Spectator readers will nevertheless be reassured to learn that the most characteristic feature of a Blair family holiday still applies: it is taking place at somebody else’s expense. The home where the Blairs are now staying is owned by a millionaire acquaintance, and it is most unlikely that they are paying anything near the market rate. In other respects life has changed. The day before setting off on holiday the Prime Minister suddenly called a press conference to announce emergency measures against terrorism. This event seems to have been intended to leave behind a sense that he was in control.

MPs set off on their holidays this week amid a mood of national consensus. Tony Blair’s reputation has never stood so high, and its lustre stretches across all parties. Conservative MPs look at him nowadays with adoration. They laugh when he laughs, and grimace when he grimaces. One of the main candidates for the Tory leadership, the moderniser David Cameron, has come to base his candidacy on the sublime proposition that he is the natural successor to Tony Blair. Cameron’s supporters openly claim that just as Blair, not John Major, was the inheritor of Thatcher, so Cameron rather than Gordon Brown will take on the gleaming Blair legacy. Meanwhile, leading figures from all parties have come together to confront the national emergency.

The recent death of Hugo Young, while still at the peak of his powers, has left an unfilled hole in British political discourse. Nobody has since emerged to match Young’s combination of soaring ideals, substantial argument and Olympian grandeur. But this week the loss of the great Guardian commentator has been felt with an especial keenness. Never would it have been so enjoyable to read his explanation of how, yet again, the British political class has failed to rise to its European destiny. In his masterpiece This Blessed Plot Young took Tony Blair at something like face value. He regarded him as the most pro-European prime minister since Edward Heath some 30 years ago.

For more than 100 years one overriding principle has governed British public life: the fastidious separation of public and private interests. Those who have worked for the state — whether in the armed forces, the Civil Service, as MPs, or in some other way — have never used their office for private gain or any other selfish purpose. These principles were first explicitly set out at the time of the Gladstonian reforms of the public service in the mid-19th century and have been adhered to since under all governments, whether Liberal, Labour or Conservative. There have of course been many individual lapses from this high ideal; but the system itself has been extremely robust, surviving throughout the 20th century.

The biggest point about last month’s general election was not really that New Labour won, but that democracy lost. The low turnout, debased calibre of debate and half-hearted result amounted as much to a repudiation of politicians as an endorsement of Tony Blair. Government ministers and opposition spokesmen despairingly agree that they have forgotten how to communicate with the voters. There are some faint signs within the Tory party that this sense of alienation from the electorate is beginning to feed into the internal debate that has followed Michael Howard’s decision to quit. But the really serious thinking is going on inside New Labour, whose public intellectuals have embarked on an agonised argument about how to reclaim British democracy.

The situation in France is very perplexing, especially if you are British. The French people may well vote Non in the constitutional referendum next Sunday, which would be a development with incalculable consequences for the future of Europe. But the French will vote Non for reasons that make no sense at all in Britain. The British No campaign urges opposition to the constitution because it threatens too much central control. The French are voting Non in such large numbers because they fear the exact opposite — a weakening of the command state. The British No campaign warns of a new wave of regulation that will damage British industry and commerce.