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.