IT IS no secret that Tony Blair’s days as British prime minister are numbered. Polls put Labour behind the resurgent Tories, who have acquired a very nearly human face through the smooth and stylish work of new boss David Cameron who, at his best, resembles no one so much as his tiresomely glib rival.

The over-privileged Cameron, who packed his posh shadow cabinet with 15 fellow old Etonians, somehow has gotten away with portraying himself as an ordinary approachable bloke who has the same worries as the common man.

This widely applauded masquerade is partly Labour’s own fault. Given Blair’s penchant for privatisation, a worried British public suspects that the National Health Service would be in safer hands with Cameron.

As for foreign follies, what is left to say about George W. Bush’s “English poodle”? It’s an image Blair will not shake off so long as the war in Iraq goes on. Blair has become a major electoral liability — Labour’s majority fell from 164 to 65 seats in the last general election — and, under severe internal pressure, he was forced to promise to step down some time next year. Blair is likely to drag out his desirable departure as long as possible, so there is a real question of whether or not he will go gracefully.

To have any hope of boosting Labour’s chances in the May 2007 elections for local government and for the Scottish and Welsh assemblies, Blair ought to exit by January so that his successor, Chancellor Gordon Brown, can trot out a distinctive agenda and begin to make his mark — most likely by tacking left, at least a bit.

Impatience is growing. In September, eight junior Labour ministers resigned in unison in the hope of generating momentum to eject Blair and bring Brown in. The misfired “coup” stirred plenty of hard feelings among party factions. Still, most party regulars realise that the May elections — anticipating a general election in two more years — need to be a referendum on Brown’s new policy wrinkles and not about the miserable tail-end of Blair’s ill-disguised neo-liberal and neo-imperialist adventures.

To keep rival strands of the party in line, Gordon Brown is obliged to pull off the delicate trick of slowly distancing himself from Blair while not explicitly repudiating Labour policies.

This feat shouldn’t be difficult to perform. Brown is deeply implicated in the “New Labour” fetish for privatising public assets, regardless of the real long-term costs. Reports on these “private finance initiatives” attest that they are nothing but a way for private firms to siphon guaranteed profits out of the public purse while minimising their responsibilities for services they are supposed to provide.

Like naive counterparts in the old Soviet bloc, New Labour members have forgotten, or were never aware of, the observation by Adam Smith that “Merchants seldom meet together, even for merriment or diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public.” Brown, a devout free trader, has been as forgetful or ignorant as anyone else.

Neither has Brown been shy about the boasting of sacking civil servants — always a crowd-pleaser in the eyes of conservatives — and he affirms that the military needs Trident submarine missile replacements at a price somewhere between 25 and 75 billion pounds, evidently to keep the likes of Iran at bay.

The chancellor doubtless has been a good number two man — almost too good. One has reason to wonder whether, if roles had been reversed, Tony Blair and his backers would be half so willing to aid and abet Brown, who is the son of a social activist Presbyterian minister and, unlike Blair, has roots in social democratic “old Labour” principles. Politics being politics, however, one also may wonder how many Blair supporters are committed in a way that will outlast his waning premiership. Ambition and opportunism are never to be underestimated. Both deputy leader John Prescott and cabinet member Margaret Beckett, sniffing the wind, recently came out in support of Brown.

Regarding foreign policy, Brown has been reluctant to express his views. Only when prodded during the last general election did the chancellor mouth a few phrases supportive of the whole sorry and stupid enterprise of the “liberation of Iraq”.

While invoking the bromides every British official utters about the UK’s “special relationship” with the US, Brown was never keen on Bush and his buccaneering administration. Brown must have been totally mystified as to how Blair stomached Bush. One recalls with no little amusement Blair’s embarrassment when a snide news interviewer asked about himself and supposedly born-again Bush, “Do you pray together?” Though Brown is a cleric’s son, it is Blair who comes across as self-righteous and sanctimonious.

Blairites are desperately trying to derail Brown in favour of someone who is “sound” — meaning good for them at whatever expense to everyone else. Recently, for example, former home secretary Charles Clarke stirred up some calculated mischief, claiming Brown “can’t work with people” (by which he seems to mean that Brown wont grovel to Blair) and was “not a risk taker” (by which he seems to mean Brown inconsiderately didn’t tip off his intentions to his enemies).

Former Blair media wizard Alistair Campbell suggested Brown was “psychologically flawed” — this considered diagnosis coming from a man who helped deceive his own nation into a needless and ghastly war. Clarke asserted that Blair was more inclined than Brown to “trust the people”, which scarcely describes a prime minister who presides over the most monitored democracy on earth, prying into everyones private business and willing to pounce on every opportunity to shred civil rights. British Muslims, as the easiest prey, are most unhappy with illiberal trends with 57 per cent saying that the authorities have no right to raid and harm innocent people — as in the Forest Gate incident — without a good deal more assurance that the evidence is correct.

The prime minister wants Brown weakened by having to adhere to unrepentant and counter-productive policies. Brown can afford to shrug off criticisms as Blair’s authority drains away, but it is also true that the longer Brown goes along with this costly charade of loyalty the more damage he will have to undo and the less time he will have to undo it. All the devious antics inside the party arise from a realistic appraisal that once Brown is in the saddle his opponents will be easily corralled, which is why they fight so hard now.

So which Brown will the UK get as leader — the co-founder of “New Labour” or the old line fiery social democrat? Which image is the disguise? Well, it hardly matters because popular discontent is building so as to create a marked shift in policy anyway — as we recently witnessed in the US elections.

The general-secretary of Britain’s largest trade union says Brown must scrap Blairite NHS reforms which are splitting it into a two-tier system (one for the affluent, and a shoddy one for the poor), or else lose trade union support, which Brown simply cannot do without. Throughout his premiership, Blair moved well past the political centre to pursue many policies dreamt up in right-wing think tanks.

Blair doubtless has the enviable knack for persuasively portraying gloomy days as radiantly sunny ones, and doing so with a perfect aplomb that many Labour members say they will miss when he is gone. Yet it’s not so rare a talent. Brown is perfectly able to pull off the old manoeuvre of saying he is sticking like glue to current policies while edging away from them as tactfully and rapidly as possible.

Brown’s first 60 to 90 days as premier must be devoted to downgrading privatisation initiatives, assuring NHS integrity, and addressing public concerns about growing inequalities. As part of an earlier bargain he cut with Blair, Brown has charted his own course as chancellor of the exchequer. Indeed, it is difficult to tell what might have happened without Brown’s restraining hand — likely a forcing of the country on to a total Thatcherite path. A good case can be made that the economic achievements that Britain enjoyed and that Blairites brag about were mostly a result of what Blair was forced by Brown and parliamentary opposition not to do.

Brown is acutely aware that he can’t afford to be a pale replica of Blair. To distinguish himself from his predecessor, he has little choice but to move subtly leftward and to leave extreme neo-liberal policies — with their naive or disingenuous faith in the “magic” of markets — to David Cameron to shill for. As some middle class voters revert to the Tories, Labour stands to more than offset them by regaining alienated voters from the median to lower end of the economic scale by offering them redistributive policies. That would be refreshingly pragmatic.

Instead of bending to Bush’s will, Brown as prime minister will do what prudent voices in the defence ministry and the military branches urge. He will serve British interests foremost, preserving the special relationship but not by dispatching troops to die for the whims of the American oil cabal. The “special relationship” between Blair and Bush was of a radically different character from that between Thatcher and Reagan or Bush’s father. Thatcher, after all, criticised the Grenada invasion in 1983.

Today, nearly two of three British voters say Blair is much too close to Bush. In the pre-invasion days many pundits vainly hoped that behind the scenes Blair was trying to dissuade Bush from pursuing his crazy project for New American Century schemes.