How to create a crisis

When Tony Blair campaigned for the rewriting of Clause 4, his mantra was that Labour ‘must mean what we say, and say what we mean’. The symbol of this supposed new transparency was the ‘pledge card’: my word is my bond, Mr Blair declared to anyone who would listen.

It is worth remembering such claims when considering the widespread briefing to the press last week that the Prime Minister is preparing a deal with Gordon Brown to settle the so-called ‘handover’ — a deal which could see Mr Blair departing No. 10 next spring. The principal objective of the two men is, according to the Guardian, to ‘get through [Labour] conference week without damaging each other’.

This was a textbook Blairite operation. Above the radar, the Prime Minister’s official spokesmen were making light of Charles Clarke’s intervention — dismissing the former Home Secretary’s attack on Mr Blair as a symptom of ‘disappointment’, the bitter outburst of a hapless political Falstaff.