Andy McSmith: The up-and-coming in New Labour have mostly upped and gone

Four months after its last general election victory, the Labour Party smartened up and put on a public presentation of itself at its annual seaside conference. The highlight of the week was a question-and-answer session in which three bright, up-and-coming Cabinet ministers took unscripted questions from a knowledgeable audience. The trio were New Labour's praetorian guard - the Transport Secretary Stephen Byers, the Education Secretary Estelle Morris, and the Health Secretary Alan Milburn - entrusted with public service delivery, which was to be the watchword of Labour's second term.

All three are not up-and-coming any more, but upped and gone. The Prime Minister wanted them to stay, but for different reasons they went - although Ms Morris has now made a partial comeback. Furthermore they were also all English, a sensible arrangement because Education and Health are devolved functions. The people who run these services in Scotland answer to the Scottish Assembly, not to the UK Parliament. Responsibility for Scotland's transport is divided between central government and the Assembly.

So England's health service has been placed in the hands of a Scot, John Reid, whose greatest achievement in that field to date is that he gave up drinking and smoking. He is a doctor, but of economic history not medicine. England's transport system, meanwhile, remains with another Scot, Alistair Darling, whose job is apparently so undemanding that he will also be able to run the truncated Scottish department and handle Scottish questions in the Commons.

This is not the only indication that Tony Blair may have fewer friends than he needs, where he needs them. There is a feeling around that despite his popularity, his commanding performances in the Commons and his firm grip on his Cabinet, the Prime Minister may now be holed below the waterline, because in the British political system, any head of government, however dominant, has to have a secure base in Parliament. Mr Blair's parliamentary base is slowly, inexorably slipping away, and it is hard to see how he can repair it.

I remember a conversation I had with Michael Portillo, after Margaret Thatcher had reshuffled her government in 1989. In that reshuffle, only one of 101 Tory MPs who had entered Parliament in the 1983 landslide was promoted to government. The other vacancies were filled by newcomers such as John Redwood and Gillian Shephard. Mr Portillo forecast that this would create a problem for his heroine, and one that arose only because she kept winning elections. This conversation opened my eyes to something that had escaped me, which is that the Commons is like a school, whose academic years are from one general election to the next. Any MP could tell you with complete accuracy which of his colleagues has been there longer than he has, who is part of the same intake, and who came later.

When I was talking last week to four ambitious Labour MPs from the 2001 intake, their entire conversation was about the possibility that some of their contemporaries were in with a chance of being promoted. The possible fate of longer-serving MPs did not feature in the conversation, because it is only when your contemporaries move ahead that you start to worry about how you are getting on. Tony Blair's situation is now analogous to Margaret Thatcher's in 1989, because six years have passed since 183 hope-filled new Labour MPs poured into the Commons in the 1997 landslide. On Friday, eight more were at last given jobs as ministers. That makes 34 now in government. More than four times that number are on the outside.

This could be the last reshuffle in which any of the 1997 intake is promoted. Those still waiting have already been overtaken by three young ministers: Douglas Alexander, David Lammy and David Miliband, who entered Parliament after the 1997 election. In the next few days, we may see more of the 2001 intake being brought into the lowest rung of government, as unpaid parliamentary private secretaries.

This problem is resolved if Labour loses the next election, or has most of its majority wiped away. But should Mr Blair return with another large Commons majority, there will be another new batch of MPs hoping for early promotion, an increasingly restive 2001 intake, and dozens from the 1997 intake still hanging about. The majority must now be thinking that the chauffeur-driven limousine will never stop at their door.

Every reshuffle brings another batch of ex-ministers who have been sacked or resigned, who now number around 60. Mr Blair's method of managing this problem is to bring one or two former ministers back into government occasionally, to give all the others hope. Much has been made of the return of the ex-ministers Estelle Morris, as Arts Minister, and Chris Mullin, to the Foreign Office. However, they both, unusually, chose to leave the Government, so their reinstatement is not much encouragement to those who have been sacked. What is more significant is the little-noticed return of Bridget Prentice, a Whip who was unaccountably sacked back in 1998, and spent five years being loyal to the Prime Minister who sacked her. Her reward may make others think there is life after death after all.

The analogy with Margaret Thatcher can be taken too far, of course. Her Cabinet was ideologically divided; it included people she would have sacked, except that she feared they would be too dangerous to her outside, and she was entering a period when her personal unpopularity was threatening the prospects of Tory MPs in marginal seats. None of this applies to Tony Blair. Until recently he had one Cabinet minister he wanted out but did not dare sack - Clare Short. Now there is none. Nor is there evidence yet that he has become an electoral drag on his party, though the latest opinion poll suggests that the Iraq war and its aftermath may be corroding his greatest political asset: the trust that people have in him. According to the Populus poll, three out of five voters think the stories about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were exaggerated to win support for the war, and a third of the British public is less inclined to trust him as a result.

Even so, if you add the enlarged number of never-made-its to the 60 or so ex-minister-has-beens on the backbenches - the latter group swollen last week by eight more "resignations" - there is dangerous silt building up in the Commons. It will make it harder for the Government to pass contentious legislation such as the introduction of higher tuition fees in the elite universities. And there is nothing Blair can do about it because there are not enough jobs to hand out.

Steve Richards is away