The answer to Tony Blair’s problems is staring him in the face

Brainwaves are unusual in the governance of men and it is rare that a knotty political problem invites a simple solution nobody had thought of before. But a conversation last week with The Spectator’s newly appointed bullfighting correspondent (Lord Garel-Jones deplores the term but there is no other) has led us to a Eureka! moment. If anyone can see a flaw let him declare it, but his lordship and I are confident.

The dilemma we can crack runs as follows. Tony Blair is Prime Minister. Gordon Brown wants to be Prime Minister. Mr Brown is under the impression that Mr Blair has promised to make way for him, and Mr Blair has never quite denied the existence of some sort of understanding. Mr Blair is enjoying being Prime Minister and is in no hurry to stop. Mr Brown, who is not enjoying being Chancellor, is in a hurry to start.

The Parliamentary Labour party dislikes Mr Blair. A majority of them probably prefer Mr Brown. The Parliamentary Conservative party secretly admires Mr Blair. They see Mr Brown as a more suitable traditional socialist enemy.

The country, meanwhile, is in no mood to terminate Mr Blair’s governance. Voters, including those who might be natural Tories, do not see the leader of the Conservative party as a convincing potential prime minister. Where Mr Blair does irritate voters is in his reformist rhetoric, unmatched by radicalism in action. He is timid at home and bold abroad, but his pretence to being some kind of a third-way saviour, when by his actions he reveals himself as a cautious temporiser, gets up the noses of reformers and conservatives alike. Many voters do not mind having a cautious temporiser as prime minister, but they do wish he’d stop promising to remake mankind. They contrast him with a chancellor whose instincts are straightforward, but in truth they are relieved that the Prime Minister is there to curb those instincts.