He holds cabinet meetings that last half an hour, and gives power to men accountable to nobody but himself: Tony Blair is not a president, he is a monarch. By Nick Cohen
The fifth anniversary of his accession to power is as good a time as any to ask: what is Tony Blair? His opponents on the left and right have raged against his immorality and hypocrisy, but more telling are the opinions of colleagues who once admired him. For the past few months, Channel 4 has paid me to interview smart but reasonably loyal Labour MPs. All are alarmed. None believes the Prime Minister is a prime minister in the traditional sense of a primus inter pares. Margaret Thatcher felled that notion, and Blair has finished it off.
Like everyone else, I'd accepted the commonplace that cabinet government is dead, but it was nevertheless disconcerting to stand with a camera crew in Downing Street and film ministers shuffling into No 10 for a cabinet meeting and shuffling out after 35 minutes - barely enough time to pass round the ginger nuts.
Charles Clarke defended Blair's style of government, as the chairman of the Labour Party must, but told me the cabinet was never invited to vote on the direction of government policy.
In these circumstances, it's remarkable that cabinet meetings last five minutes, let alone 35. .
The government's decision to allow the chairmen and women of select committees to interview the PM was nowhere near enough to satisfy the minority on the Labour back benches who can utter a sentence of their own without the permission of the whips. The most radical among them want a complete separation between government and legislature.
If Blair is not a prime minister who can be checked by the cabinet or parliament, the question remains: what is he? "A president" is a good answer.
The only difficulty with the presidential answer to the what-is-Blair question is that there isn't a democratic president on earth who wouldn't give his eye-teeth for Blair's power. However mighty the US or French presidents may seem, they can't put their toadies in their equivalents of the House of Lords without asking the permission of the electorate. Presidential republics are bound by written constitutions. Britain is, notoriously, a monarchy.

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