The Sketch: Letwin gives the hairy heeled Home Secretary yet another polite pounding

To see Oliver Letwin and David Blunkett at their dispatch boxes is a unique parliamentary pleasure. No Tory spokesman has so nimbly got the measure of his minister; and conversely, no minister has been so thoroughly defeated so frequently in so short a time in office.

The pounding, thumping, reforming Home Secretary, scourge of liberals, champion of brutal common sense, has backed down on asylum, e-mail tracking, identity cards, blasphemy, incitement to racial hatred, reform of police overtime and from an unpleasant proposal to take over failing police forces all by himself. All this in just the last nine months.

As a prime ministerial candidate – there are those who suggest he's a possible successor to Tony Blair – he is, in a phrase he's made his own, "a pygmy".

Mr Letwin is polite, agile, intellectual, and hails from the cosmopolitan end of the haut-bourgeoisie. Mr Blunkett is a heavy-footed, hairy-heeled graduate of a working-class background. He uses this background to great and unintentionally comic effect. Class warfare the way Mr Blunkett prosecutes it is a bit medieval, by the standards of New Labour.

Oliver Letwin's natural courtesies appear so genuine that Mr Blunkett can't obviously object to them. But it's pretty clear how he dislikes those precise, assured, educated voices, and those big-house manners. He once exploded at the aimiable Lord Blake on a radio programme, complaining that it was easy to patronise a working-class lad like himself from a council estate.

Mr Blunkett's new drug strategy is a classic piece of triangulation. He ingratiates himself to liberals by downgrading the classification of cannabis; he appeals to authoritarians by upping the penalty for selling it to (absurdly, you might think) 10 years.

"An extraordinary statement on an extraordinary day," Mr Letwin began. There were two alternative and coherent strategies for dealing with drugs "and the Home Secretary has not chosen either of them." One strategy would be the complete legalisation of cannabis, treating it (and taxing it) like tobacco or, as the Tories preferred, making serious efforts to lead young people away from drug taking.

By downgrading the classification of cannabis to the level of steroids and sleeping pills Mr Blunkett had, he went on, given control of the drug supply over to drug dealers.

It was a "muddled and dangerous policy", and posed questions that were very difficult to answer. Should, for instance, police arrest people openly selling cannabis? Or should they look away? If he was effectively decriminalising it, why did he want to make people buy it from criminals? To one set of people he was saying it was OK to buy the stuff, but to another set he was saying they'd go to jail for selling it. It was a deeply confusing policy and was sending out mixed messages.

"I admire the Home Secretary on many counts," Mr Letwin said. And he said it so well you could almost believe he meant it. I almost believe it myself.

No, really. Especially admired by Mr Letwin was Mr Blunkett's ability to withdraw from an impossible situation (see above). Would he display the same admirable quality before making this disastrous Order in Council? Mr Letwin had made Mr Blunkett "very sad indeed", so Mr Blunkett said. That was one thing I really didn't believe.

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