Season's greetings to our three wise men

When Harold Macmillan got back in 1959 with a majority of 100 and the Labour Party was in the middle of one of its periodic fits of fratricide, Iain Macleod said that the Conservatives would have to provide their own opposition. He spoke too smugly, too soon. After a year or so the government was losing by-elections, ministers were making a mess of things and Macmillan's position was being questioned. In 1963 he resigned, to be replaced by Lord Home.

How very different is the position of Mr Tony Blair today! He also has had his share of setbacks. It will never be glad confident morning again. But then, it has not been glad confident morning since the Bernie Ecclestone affair. Mr Blair went on television and said: "Trust me, I'm a politician." And people did, not just at the time, but at the election four years later on.

They may not trust him quite so much today, not personally that is. But it seems to make no difference to their inclination to vote for his party – or, what amounts to the same thing, not to vote for the Opposition. His position is unique. There has been nothing like it within living memory.

All the prime ministers who have dominated politics since Winston Churchill – Macmillan, Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher – have seen their popularity fall. Macmillan and Wilson saw their party defeated at the subsequent general election. Lady Thatcher was kicked out in 1990 because her backbenchers thought she would lose them the forthcoming contest. Mr John Major won it instead. My own guess is that she would have won it too, by a slightly bigger margin. But obviously no one can know.

The immediate point is that Mr Blair's position is stronger than that of any of his commanding predecessors. This (there is no harm in revealing it at this stage) was why he won The Spectator's "Parliamentarian of the Year" gong last month. In the early stages of the race the leader of the field was Mr Gerald Kaufman, on account of his long service and good conduct and, in particular, of his acute chairmanship of his backbench committee.

One of the judges objected that, while Mr Kaufman was no doubt a very fine fellow who had done the state some service in his time, he was, after all, 72, and neither a minister nor ever likely to be one in the future. Giving him the principal award would be rather like organising a beauty contest and declaring the winner to be Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles. The sponsors, Zurich Financial Services, surely deserved some return on the money they had invested. They wanted less a Camilla than a Diana, a star, or somebody who could plausibly be so depicted.

Mr Iain Duncan Smith was clearly out. There was certainly a strong case for Mr Charles Kennedy. But Mr Blair's cause somehow prevailed. Mr Kaufman had to content himself with a deserved subsidiary award as "Survivor of the Year". Mr Blair won the main gong because by dominating politics he necessarily dominated the House of Commons, even though – as several critics correctly pointed out afterwards – he hardly ever set foot in the place if he could help it.

It is said that Mr Blair owes his pre-eminence partly, at least, to a changed political system, which renders the position of any Prime Minister more presidential. I do no want to dismiss this explanation out of hand, except to note that in the 1960s, the age of Macmillan and Wilson, it was being advanced with just as much conviction as it was in the 1980s, the age of Thatcher – and often by the very same authorities who are putting it forward with so much certainty today. People become very attached to their theories.

In truth the theory of presidential government was blown out of the water in November 1990, when a Prime Minister in good (at any rate physical) health and in possession of an adequate, in her case a large, parliamentary majority, was forced out of office. But in the 1970s we heard much less about presidential government, because Wilson first led a minority government and then had a tiny majority; while James Callaghan mostly had no majority at all.

Mr Major started off with a majority of 21 and by the 1997 dissolution he was in a minority of three. We heard little or nothing about presidential government in this period either. This was partly because Mr Major had deliberately cast himself as a more emollient and prime ministerial figure than his predecessor; as, indeed, had Lord Callaghan 16 years previously. But it was mainly because Mr Major, like Lord Callaghan as well, had first a small and then a non-existent majority.

Mr Blair has won a huge majority not once but twice. It is inaccurate, by the way, to say that he is the first Labour prime minister to win a second term. C R Attlee won a second term in 1950 but threw it away with an unnecessary general election in 1951. Wilson won a second term in 1966, but his first term had lasted only 18 months. So it is easy to see what people mean, even if they are being a bit sloppy about it. What makes Mr Blair's position even more dominating is that he looks like achieving the same next time round. Lady Thatcher did likewise. His dominance now is no healthier than hers was then. In fact (as we usually write when what we really mean is "in my opinion") it is even less healthy. For Mr Neil Kinnock was a more effective Leader of the Opposition than Mr Duncan Smith is today. There was then a feeling that, with a little help from Mr Peter Mandelson and one or two others, Labour might actually pull it off.

There is no comparable hope among the Tories today. Many commentators have written about the hopelessness of Mr Duncan Smith. What has perhaps been insufficiently emphasised is what a rum customer he is. Originally plain Ian Smith, he reminds me of men I would come across in bars about 30 years ago. They would engage one in conversation:

"I say, old man, could you possibly see your way to lending me a fiver till Monday? Find myself a bit short." Catching sight of a full wallet, they would add: "I say, d'you mind terribly making that a tenner?"

In the Who's Who before me, he claims to have been educated, after HMS Conway (virtually a reformatory), at "Univ. di Perugia". This is a fib. He was at a language school there which had no connection with the university. This had been disclosed well before Newsnight claimed a scoop last Wednesday. It was in this column as a matter of fact, though I had picked it up from some other printed source.

Many embellish their lives. More people claim to have had a trial for Llanelli than served in the French Resistance. Who's Who is or should be different. The only hope of opposition to Mr Blair now clearly lies in Mr Kennedy – all the more so if there is a war against Iraq.