Blair out Brown in

The media coverage of Gordon Brown becoming Prime Minister provides for a rare opportunity to consider the way power dynamics are portrayed. Almost all of the coverage has been positive. Brown has installed a lot of new, some fresh, faces into his Cabinet. He has been quoted extensively basically saying we need less Blairite (used car salesman) showmanship and more sobre, sensible policy building.

Whether things will actually change all that much remains to be seen. Nevertheless, I think one key lesson from all this is to remember that, fundamentally, power rests in the institutions and the interests they serve rather than one or two individuals. Tony Blair is being made the fall guy for a range of policy errors during his tenure. The most obvious and criminal of those is his support for the war in Iraq. I can't remember the last time one political leader has been expected to take all the blame like this. Perhaps it was Anthony Eden after the botched Suez war? Yet it wasn't just Tony marching into Iraq. It was Blair and a majority of MPs both Labour and Tory.

It's impossible for anyone to know for sure of course, but my prediction is that the Government and media will try to sweep the worst of the Labour Government's ills under the Tony Blair carpet as though those in power no longer bear responsibility for those errors.