What are we - or future historians - to make of a respected journalist on a serious newspaper devoting an entire column to Tony Blair's decision - "iconoclasm" in the words of Martin Kettle - to allow Cabinet members to call each other by their first names? Is government really just a matter of symbolism rather than political substance? If so, is it any wonder that people are so cynical about politicians?
For newspapers like The Guardian, galloping depoliticisation has long been a feature. The ideology of post-modernism lends intellectual support to this approach. The fragmentary identity of the "decentered subject" in which one's choice of football team or style of dress is given the same significance as one's class, ethnic or gender identity is ideally suited to the requirements of consumerism. The rejection of universal values and of a world outlook sits well with the ironic hauteur of the would-be opinion-formers of the upmarket media.
Has this process spread to New Labour? Timothy Bewes evidently thinks so. Describing Tony Blair as more "post-modern" than any theoretician he argues that the leader's project is not simply a move to the right but a retreat from politics.
In his new book, Cynicism and Post-modernity, he writes: "In so far as a political agenda can be discerned amid the rhetorical emissions of New Labour, it would appear to consist in shrugging off politics, in transforming 'political' responsibility into an ethical imperative, and siting it therefore within an 'inclusive' realm of society and community. Political responsibility is abrogated to the individual, whereby it is stripped of its essentially political character. The 'Blair Revolution' is a programme not of structural change, but of change in the way that individuals live their lives and comprehend their relations with others. Socialism, for Tony Blair, has no particular economic or even political significance, but constitutes rather 'a moral purpose to life' - a set of values, he says, a belief in society."
Blair's Big Idea, argues Bewes, is that everything should simply be as it ought to be - a very static vision. In Blair's own words: "Teachers should be properly rewarded. But if they can't do the job, they should not be teaching at all. Heads should prove their leadership skills before they are considered for a head's post. Parents have duties. Children do homework. They shouldn't be playing truant. And where they are, it's not just the school's job to do something about it, but the parents' too."
What does this mean? Bewes comments: "Blair sees certain things out of shape which he means to put into shape - a process which by definition comprehends a strategy of resistance towards new shapes. 'We will put our education system right', avows Blair. 'No more dogma. No more arguments about structures.' Which is to say in effect, no more politics. Instead, 'a new deal in our classrooms', says Blair. 'We will be the champions of standards for the 21st century'. That children should do their homework, however, is about as political an objective as the declaration that grass should be green, or that dogs should bark. Similarly, the statement that teachers should be 'properly' paid, or that only suitable people be considered for a head's post, affirms nothing more than that 'things as they are' should be as they ought to be." Bewes is undoubtedly right about Blair's discourse. But now New Labour is in government and government is about policy, not just words. As the Clinton experience in the US shows, the policies behind the feelgood values - ending guaranteed welfare, free trade agreements which impoverish millions of Third World producers, backing repressive regimes - simply don't match the rhetoric.
Blair's first days already reveal a calculating small-mindedness in policy detail which belies the grandness of his vision. The responsibility of socialists is to transcend the cynicism felt towards the Blair perspective and engage his government with demands based on a mandate for radical change.