'He's a fine looking man, no mistake about that. What a pity he is

An editor I once worked for had various journalistic maxims. Since you ask, it was John Junor of the Sunday Express, a palpable monster who, however, possessed several good qualities. His prescriptions included: "No first class journalist ever has a beard." "Only poofs drink rose." "An ounce of emotion is worth a ton of fact." "It is not libellous to ask a question." (This legally dangerous principle led Junor into trouble on several occasions.) "When in doubt, turn to the Royal Family." Prominent among Junor's moral maxims for modern journalists was: "Always look forward, never back."

This led the editor to become impatient with reconstructions or reassessments of past events. He preferred to speculate about what old so-and-so (it was always a leading politician) would get up to next, usually something of a discreditable nature. And so, today, people like to guess what Mr Gordon Brown will do when he becomes prime minister.

In fact there has been very little prediction of a detailed character. Whether Mr Brown will be very like Mr Tony Blair, or very unlike Mr Blair: that, together with the identity of Mr Brown's new chancellor of the exchequer, is the only question. For the next couple of weeks, interrupted only by the local elections, we can break one of the Junor rules and look back.

Party leaders have rarely been loved by their parties, the exceptions being George Lansbury and Michael Foot. This general rule has been so irrespective of whether they became prime minister or not. It has been the same with Labour and Conservative alike. Of Conservatives, there have been more of them, that is all; and since Sir John Major they have come and gone at an alarming rate.

By comparison, Mr Blair is a slow-burning beacon of order and stability. Electorally, he is the most successful Labour leader of all time. Using the same criterion we find he is the most successful Labour prime minister. He fought three and won three, all convincingly; so did Margaret Thatcher.

Harold Wilson won four out of five, though three of these wins were shaky, to say the least. C R Attlee won two out of four, but if he had managed to hang on in 1951, as he could perfectly well have done instead of going to the country, the history of postwar Britain might have been different.

Ramsay MacDonald has never had a fair assessment, except from his biographer, Mr David Marquand, and a few historians. But MacDonald did win two elections, in 1924 and 1929. At the formation of the first - minority - Labour government, by the way, the phrase used by ministers was that Labour was "in office, but not in power", so anticipating by 70 years the words used by Norman Lamont in his resignation speech.

MacDonald was unjustly reviled by his party after 1931. The others have fared slightly better, but not by much. Labour conferences have traditionally responded to the names of Aneurin Bevan, usually called "Nye", especially by those who did not know him; not to mention Keir Hardie, and a group invariably referred to as "the pioneers", which made further description unnecessary.

A brave attempt to introduce Attlee into the pantheon was made by Mr Tony Benn in the 1970s. Mr Benn called him "Clem Attlee" and made much of his introduction not only of the welfare state but of various measures of nationalisation. Why, the man was a raging leftist. Or so Mr Benn assured us. It is a tribute to Mr Benn's persistence and to his powers of persuasion alike that, 20 years later, he has contrived to introduce "Clem Attlee" to the company of saints.

No such luck for Jim Callaghan; still less for Harold Wilson. And yet, for 13 years, 1963-76, Wilson dominated politics, almost eight of them as prime minister. He cultivated the comparison with the deceased J F Kennedy, which was absurd, while taking care to retain his homelier appurtenances.

But while Wilson had stage-props - his Gannex coat, his patent flame-throwing gas lighter - Mr Blair fully immerses himself in the part. Someone said that, when the actor David Garrick played a murderer, he felt like a murderer. In that case, Samuel Johnson replied, he ought to be hanged whenever he played one.

The acute will notice that, in the nature of things, the performance could be given only once, but we are not here to create difficulties. The short point is that Mr Blair is a natural actor: when he takes on a part, he believes in it, until the next part comes along.

In the war years, Bevan accused Winston Churchill of "dressing up in ridiculous uniforms". Churchill was indeed a military romantic, though he spent the best part of his last government trying to reach an accommodation with what was then the Soviet Union. Mr Blair is quite different. Mr Blair has no interest in military matters, as such. He is, rather, a form of neo-conservative.

The phrase, which derives from the United States, is misleading; much as "liberal" means interventionist or even near-communist. The neoconservatives started out in New York, were associated with Commentary magazine, were originally communist sympathisers, became hostile to communism, joined the Democrats, decided that human rights on Western lines were applicable throughout the world, joined the Republicans and proceeded to invade Iraq. The practical intellectual was Mr Paul Wolfowitz.