What will happen when New Labour is old hat?

He must decide if New Labour is an advertising slogan which worked for one campaign, but which it would be better to drop now

GIVEN THAT Tony Blair arrived in Downing Street with his eyes already set on re-election, probably in 2001, it is certain that he has given considerable thought to the following question: how long should his party continue to call itself new Labour or, as Blair prefers, New Labour?

This is not a small matter, since Blair's re-naming of the party has been fundamental to his success, distancing him from Old Labour and exhausted Toryism, while proclaiming his intention to build a political base far beyond Labour's natural territorial limits. New Labour, New Britain is the central rhetorical pillar of the Blair government.

That, however, will not stop Blair dropping the label if he judges it advantageous. He must decide whether New Labour is, like New York, a permanently changed reality, or an advertising slogan which worked for one campaign, but which it would be better to drop as a 50-year-old prime minister seeks re-election emphasising continuity and experience. Labour: the party you can trust. Labour: you know it makes sense.

The advice of the party's marketing professionals will be to keep it New, particularly if Old Labour continues to assert itself in any form in the politics of London, for example, or in Scotland. In marketing, there is no shame in continually re-branding something as new, however spurious the change of formulation. Which way will Blair jump?

The prime minister has certainly crooned his love affair with newness. The word appeared 33 times in one conference speech and a recent anthology of Blair "buzzwords" recorded 111 mentions, against a mere 10 for the word socialism. New's only rival in the Labour lexicon is the closely related youth - as in New Britain, Young Country.

Two paradoxes stand out. The obvious one, that Britain is an old country with an ageing population generates persistent tension. The marketing people, however, tell the prime minister that he needn't worry about this because these days even the old want to be young. Forty years ago, young men leaving university bought trilby hats and pipes and tried to look old.

Today the over-sixties wear denims and 40 per cent of MG sports cars are bought by people over the age of 50. This paradox within the paradox explains why Blair is able to pursue his "young country" rhetoric with confidence: no-one, it seems, wants to live in an Old Country.

When it comes to New, modernised Britain, however, Blair has a different problem. On the surface, he enjoys an easy echo with the radical ambition of a John F. Kennedy or a Harold Wilson, but there is also a stark difference. Kennedy and Wilson were modernising leaders in an age of modernity; in spite of two world wars, we were still living in an age of scientific expectation. Today's post-modern climate results from the sense that science is two-faced, its benefits threatened by environmental side-effect and moral over-reach. In post-modernity, art takes refuge in irony and cynicism.

The underlying tension arises from Blair's attempt to construct a politics of modernism in a post-modern age. A neat example is Chris Smith's new book, Creative Britain, savaged from the high ground by George Walden but ironically exonerated by Will Self, who pronounced reading it less painful than striking himself over the head with a wooden plank.

The book itself is mainly a collection of forgettable speeches, though its its introductory and final chapters set out in ambitious terms the idea of a mutually beneficial interplay between economic and cultural modernisation. In so doing, the Culture Secretary, himself an expert in the Romantic poets, prays in aid of the spirit of 19th century modernisation, from William Hazlitt to John Ruskin.

He then, literally, wraps his earnest agenda in two paintings by Damien Hirst, which form the front and back covers of the book. The first is entitled "beautiful, all round, lovely day, big toys for big kids, Frank and Lorna, when we are no longer children." And on the back: "beautiful snail crunching under the boot painting." Damien's post-modern snigger is meant to say: yes, I can paint by appointment to HMG if I feel like it, but don't expect me and my mates to refrain from chucking a bucket of water over the Deputy Prime Minister if we feel like that too.

For Blair, this situation offers swings and roundabouts. It is the relativism of the post-modern world - where there's a place for everything but nothing is sure of its place - that makes possible the pick and mix inclusiveness of Blair's own politics. True, it also leads to the charge that New Labour lacks conviction - but in post-modernity, mankind cannot stand too much conviction.

The countervailing problem for Britain's first po-mo PM, is that it's difficult to be optimistic or even serious with Damien Hirst in the room; and without optimism and serious purpose, politics can't achieve anything. This difficulty is made flesh beneath the roof of the Millennium Dome, where we have all been able to witness the severe difficulties attached to representing in concrete form Blair's New Britain.

If Blair were a modernising prime minister in the age of modernity's innocence, he would have ordered up an Eiffel Tower or a Crystal Palace, but that doesn't work today. He's stuck with post-modernity, indeed he is the creature of it, facing the awkward task of how to locate a consensus and inject it with some purpose.

What the Dome's designers are finding is that New Britain's cultural spirit is as elusive as its New Labour's Third Way politics. It is not surprising that these two, the Dome and the Third Way, are such favoured targets of mockery, from both the left and the right, for truly, in the richness of their paradox, they are Blairism.

But as post-modernity comes face to face with the 21st century, Blair will get the last, sardonic laugh. This is because, however difficult it is to be a modernising prime minister amid post-modernity's social and economic turbulence, it is even more difficult - indeed, arguably it is impossible, to be a successful conservative, whether from the left or right. The New Labour label, I would say, has legs.

This article is based upon an edition of `Analysis, New and Non-new', broadcast tonight, R4, 8.30 pm.