Mr Blair looks nice and talks Tory, but is presiding over a vast increase in state power

To watch Tony Blair at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet on Monday night was to be reminded that nobody is better at delivering a certain kind of speech. The actual language is unremarkable, and so is the delivery, and so are the jokes. We do not feel ourselves to be in the presence of Demosthenes, or Oscar Wilde, or Lloyd George. When Mr Blair reaches some passage which he tries, by a catch in his voice, to invest with emotion, he sounds callow. But these defects, or limitations, help him avoid the far more dangerous error of sounding superior. The Prime Minister’s charm, his natural good manners, save him from any hint of superiority or condescension. But more than that, he is brilliant at giving comfort and reassurance to his listeners, and especially to listeners who might be expected, as at Guildhall, to incline towards the Conservative party. Mr Blair is leader of the Labour party, but here he is, for the sixth year running, wearing a white tie: what could be more reassuring than that, or more demonstrative of his respect for his hosts? ‘When I look at Tony Blair, I know he’s not going to expropriate me,’ as one Conservative lady is in the habit of saying – this being the fear that Labour politicians always used to provoke in her.

Mr Blair began his speech by telling some amusing stories about the visits of previous prime ministers, namely Pitt the Younger, Lord Melbourne and the Duke of Wellington, to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet. Here was further reassurance for any listener of a conservative disposition. He plainly is a man who respects and delights in the past. A mood had by now been established in which the Prime Minister was accepted as one of us.