For PM, it has to be DM

No leadership election occurs in a political vacuum. For good or ill, the current race for the leadership of the Labour Party will invariably be shaped in part by the context in which it is taking place.

Like it or not, it is the Blair-Brown years, and their ultimately shattering denouement in the general election defeat of 6 May, which provide the inescapable backdrop to this contest.

For at least one of the candidates, Ed Balls, that defeat already looks likely to have dealt a terminal blow to his leadership aspirations.

For all his pugnacious qualities - none of the candidates have landed as many blows on the Lib-Con coalition as he has - the party was never going to replace the defeated Gordon Brown with, well, Gordon Brown Mark II.

But if this has been a difficult election in which to be a Brownite - all the candidates have been anxious to distance themselves to a greater or lesser degree from the former Prime Minister - being seen as a Blairite is not much of a recommendation either.

If by publishing his memoirs in the week the leadership ballot papers went out, Tony Blair hoped to influence the contest in favour of his protege David Miliband, it only goes to show how delusional he has become.

Mr Blair's account of his 'Journey' is already a bestseller, but many Labour members will be aghast at his decision to kick Mr Brown when he is down while simultaneously refusing to criticise Prime Minister David Cameron.

Then again, why would he, since he too clearly believes that the coalition is a Blairite continuity administration, doing exactly the things he would have done had he not been thwarted by nasty old Gordon.

So far from boosting the elder Miliband's candidature, the book looks likely to provoke a backlash against Mr Blair which could well harm the Shadow Foreign Secretary.

But in my view, that would be a shame, because, aside from all the factionalism, David Miliband is the best qualified candidate to take Labour back into government.

I have to confess that at the outset of this contest, I was leaning more towards Andy Burnham, which would have been the first time Durham North MP Kevan Jones and I had agreed about anything.

But while Mr Burnham is clearly the candidate most attuned to the needs of the North, his oddly tribal, Old Labour-ish campaign has seemed at odds with the 'new politics' of co-operation and coalition.

Of the other candidates, Ed Balls has already been dealt with, Diane Abbot would clearly take Labour back to irrelevance, while I wonder whether Ed Miliband is really ready for the top job.

I like a lot of what he has had to say about the need for Labour to regain its values before it can think of regaining power, and the 'Red Ed' jibes from the Blairite camp are self-evidently ludicrous.

For me, Ed's problem is not his politics, but the fact that he comes across as rather well-meaning and naive - a nice guy, an original thinker even, but not quite tough enough to be leader - and maybe PM - just yet.

By contrast, the one quality his elder brother possesses above all is that, having already held a major office of state, you can easily imagine him as Prime Minister now.

Mr Blair was at pains in his TV interview with Andrew Marr on Wednesday to stress that the South Shields MP is his own man, and that is one thing he was right about.

As a North-East Blairite, he could easily have got sucked into the silly tribalism that affected some of his former parliamentary colleagues in the region who saw any criticism of their beloved leader as a betrayal, but to his credit he never did.

I have no doubt at all that if he wins, David's first priority will be to unite the party and draw a line under the feuding once and for all.

But will he win? That is the question to which I will turn my attentions in next week's column.

Blairite, Thatcherite - or maybe both?

The milestone of a new government's 100th day in office is one of those political landmarks which is perhaps given undue significance by commentators.

After all, it would be a pretty poor sort of government that failed to reach the target, even one cobbled together from two wildly differing parties in the wake of an inconclusive general election result.

Nevertheless, while the first 100 days of a government's life do not necessarily determine its character, they do provide significant pointers to what sort of administration it is likely to become.

In the case of the Con-Lib coalition, it is reasonably clear that the dominant theme thus far has been what its critics would call the "Tory cuts" agenda rather than "Liberal reform" one.

Lib Dem deputy leader Nick Clegg, minding the shop this week and next during Prime Minister David Cameron's holidays, is understandably keen to disabuse the voters of this notion.

He insisted yesterday that being in government meant the Lib Dems were able to make progress with a "liberal agenda"- but few believe him.

In a different way, Chancellor George Osborne, who by contrast has provided the dominant voice of the coalition thus far, was also at pains to emphasise this week that the government is about more than cuts.

Although his big speech on Tuesday was focused on the continuing need for spending reductions, it was tempered with talk of creating a 'fairer society' in the longer-term.

For what it's worth, my own view on the coalition is that it probably has over-emphasised its determination to cut spending at the expense of its reformist credentials.

What reform proposals there have been, notably on education and the NHS, have been largely about shrinking the size of the state – something that is intimately bound up with the spending cutbacks.

There has been much less talk of political reform besides the announcement of the date of the referendum on the voting system, something which is likely to turn into the hottest of potatoes for the coalition.

What, for instance, has become of the much-vaunted 'Freedom Bill' to abolish hundreds of unnecessary regulations brought in by New Labour? Has the coalition belatedly decided they were necessary after all?

The debate over what sort of government this really is was thrown into relief by the decision of the former Darlington MP Alan Milburn this week to become its 'social mobility tsar.'

It inevitably led to cries of betrayal from some of his more tribal ex-colleagues, Andy Burnham and John Prescott among them.

A more charitable interpretation of his actions, though, would be to see the coalition as a Blairite continuity administration, implementing the public service reforms Mr Milburn himself advocated when in government.

Although he would never use these words, the former health secretary might well echo the sentiment: "I never left New Labour, New Labour left me."

Since Mr Cameron is on record as claiming that he is the true 'Heir to Blair,' I have no doubt that this is how the Prime Minister sees his own administration

Others, though, see it differently. To many on the left, Mr Cameron is not so much an arch-Blairite as an arch-Thatcherite, taking the axe to areas of the state even she would have seen as sacrosanct.

Perhaps, though, he is both. Such is the extent to which these two former Prime Minsters have dominated the politics of the past 30 years that it is hard for the current one to escape their influence.

After just 100 days, it is far too early to give this government an 'ism.' But if I had to, 'Blatcherism' would perhaps be the one I would choose.

Some advice for Tony Blair

"So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving will be in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you."

Matthew 6, vv2-4