The remarkable hostility of George W. Bush towards Gordon Brown

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. One central theme has already emerged.

New Labour politicians are conscious that politicians have been forced out of the public space that they once had to themselves. It has been stolen from them by the media, by public relations men, by charities and lobbyists and by the arrival of celebrity culture. All of these seem to enjoy a mystical connection with public opinion that politicians can only dream of.

Craig Brown captured this point quite brilliantly in his Telegraph column last Saturday when he wrote, ‘Watching Bob Geldof being interviewed by Kirsty Wark about the G8 summit on Newsnight the other day, I was struck by how closely it resembled one of those quaintly deferential political interviews from the 1950s, in which the interviewer kicks off by asking Mr Macmillan whether he minds awfully answering a question or two.’

Only celebrities — pop stars, footballers, television personalities, novelists once they have reached a certain status — can now rely on the respectful attention that used to be the exclusive lot of the politician.