A little less of Camelot, and a bit more of FDR

Style and Substance

Around 1986 - or in terms of Labour Party history several ice ages ago - some of those around Neil Kinnock concluded that the excitement he should generate during his first general election as leader was that of "FDR laced with Camelot". It took ten years and another two leaders for this dream to come even within sight of being realised. The FDR element appears to have stuck through that dark decade of opposition: this week the government proves that old slogans never die when it begins its advertising campaign on a jobs programme with the same title that summed up Franklin Delano Roosevelt's huge appeal to the American people more than half a century ago: "The New Deal". But what about the Camelot?

The new style that Tony Blair brought to Downing Street was a real break with the past. Suddenly here was a Prime Minister who appeared to enjoy the job - in contrast to a predecessor who often looked as he wished he were somewhere else. As the first Prime Minister since Asquith to bring up children in office, he positively enjoyed Chequers, which John Major initially had hated. The parties for designers, rock stars, actors, architects were part of that. And the polls all suggested that the British public were entirely comfortable with the change - just as they also suggested that it was remarkably forgiving of, or uninterested in, the spate of presentational lapses that characterised the birth pangs of office. Against that background the Tory attacks on the trivia of ministers' personal behaviour appeared to founder woefully. Or did it?

At the weekend Conservative Central Office announced that its private polling suggesting that some of the attacks on ministers' personal behaviour had made an impact. We shouldn't be too starry eyed about this. If some of the more hilarious private polling "released" by the Tories before the last general election was to be believed, Tony Blair was a smarmy git the British people would never vote for. But my guess is that these polls have nevertheless picked up something real, if scarcely tangible, a nascent - and easily correctable - discontent with the way some in the government comport themselves from time to time.

Take one example. When the proto-Blairite MP Tony Wright took his political life in his hands by suggesting that it was "indefensible" for ministers to take their spouses, partners, or whatever on foreign trips, his remarks were met with a frosty silence. Wright may not have been politically wise since he happens to be a parliamentary aide to Lord Irvine who has been among those criticised. But he was making a point that challenges the standard - and factually correct - defence that the present government is ligging and partying less than the previous one. (That defence was reinforced yesterday by fresh figures demonstrating that money spent on hospitality, government cars, and overseas travel is running at somewhat less than the previous government's). Wright's subtext was that a reforming government might consider revising some of the rules rather than merely conforming to them. This doesn't mean mean that the Prime Minister should be saving money by driving round in the modern equivalent of a Ford Prefect, as Clement Attlee did, with his wife at the wheel. Nor does it mean that the rules - new or old - shouldn't be applied with some flexibility. Nor even that John Prescott should have to part with his beloved Jaguar or that an art-loving Lord Chancellor shouldn't be allowed to bring some 19th century Scottish painting up from the vaults to put on his walls. To create a regime so monolithic that every trait that makes a politician human and individual - and therefore rather less like a politician - is to make them less good as politicians. And in the matter of partner-travel, both the Prime Minister - who would have been wholly perverse not to take his wife to the White House last week - and the Foreign Secretary are special cases. If you have a travel schedule as remorseless as Robin Cook's, it seems reasonable for the sake of his personal sanity, that he should be able to take Ms Gaynor Regan along from time to time. In the other cases - and there have been eight of them since the election - Wright seems to have a rather valid point.

The answer to all this will be that it is simply too trivial to think about, and that the Tories, stunned by the government's continued success, have nothing else to talk about. There is something in that. But style and image matter. If it didn't there wouldn't have been so many hours, both before and since the election spent by New Labour on trying to get them right. The problem is partly the one lucidly defined by the Prime minister himself - that this is a government in the "post-euphoria, pre- delivery" stage. What will, in the end, excite the British electorate is not how many times Liam and Noel Gallagher get asked to Downing Street, or what costumes Cherie Booth wears in Washington but what the "third way", between old Labour statism and new free market Toryism, can deliver over this parliament. You don't have to look further than yesterday for two modest examples of the potential. A government, perhaps a little too slowly, but determinedly nevertheless, trying to recreate a grown up local government that gets more freedom in return for showing more responsibility. And a government prepared to take seriously research which suggests more roads lead to fewer, not more jobs.

Below the surface real problems are being wrestled with, real polices - including the administration-defining welfare to work programme - to be put to the test. Blairite glamour reached its zenith last week in Washington in the unusual circumstances of a British Prime Minister investing, in the national interest, in a US President now likely to survive his troubles and able to return some favours. But in the months ahead doing will matter more than saying. The decision to spurn ministerial ambitions for World Cup tickets is a sign that Blair understands the need to limit the trappings of power, which he warned his ministers after May 1 were not their purpose in life. For the time being, a little more FDR, a little less Camelot.