Robert Marshall-Andrews

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Don't push the Labour party too far, Mr Blair (from The Sunday Times)

Napoleon, the chief pig in Orwell's Animal Farm, was a master of political manipulation and control. Whenever his fellow animals, recently emancipated by their revolution, became restless at the apparent lack of change or progress, he, or his messenger Squealer (who interestingly had a twisting, spinning tail), would speak sternly to them of the realities of life and the dreadful economic and environmental inheritance of the farmyard.

He would warn darkly that criticism and division would lead to the most dreaded event of all, namely the return of the farmers; anything, but anything, was better than that. And so the animals shut up. Unhappily, as we know, the farmers did come back, not as masters but at the invitation of the pigs who, the animals sadly observed, were now walking on two legs.

Orwell's great allegory has, of course, no relevance to modern Britain. New Labour has, in any event, no time for political philosophy. In our modern, pluralist, classless, mobile, Ford Galaxy-driving society, such things are old Hattersley.

Yet, as parliament resumes, the prime minister might profitably spend time browsing the works of Charles Montesquieu, the French satirist, historian, political philosopher and general bon viveur who provided us with L'Esprit des lois , the great treatise on the balances and curtailment of power, essential for the health of democracy. In doing so, he might reflect upon the events of the past six months and another animal metaphor.

New Labour now has no natural predators. The Tory party, a sad old lion close to death, has become a grotesque parody of its own infamous propaganda. The wolves of market capital circle only to pledge their best endeavours. Even the Daily Beast, once savage and terrifying to the old left, is now a convenient back to ride on.

The Liberal Democrats trot to heel on the short leash of electoral reform, and the Labour conference, traditionally the curse and curb of its own governments, has rolled joyfully upon its back to have, simultaneously, its tummy tickled and its teeth painlessly extracted. This is total power. Whatever the jocular intentions of the lord chancellor assuming for himself the mantle of Wolsey, the growing perception of this political reality accounts for a collective failure to get the joke.

When the dogs of Millbank drew up their lists of potential mavericks in their own ranks it was more than just depressingly infantile (though it was certainly that). It was the first paranoia of obsessive authority.

But if we have a Tyranny of Enlightenment, does it matter so long as it is for ever enlightened? Should we always prefer Montesquieu to Machiavelli? Why not hail the prince provided he is, self-proclaimed, "a pretty straight sort of guy" enjoying the unwhipped support of 93% of his subjects?

Why not? In those heady days of May when the sun shone from a blue sky and we, the new army of West minster, too numerous to billet, sat on park benches opening sackfuls of well-wishings from new friends in the City, industry and every manufacture from candy to cement, anything seemed possible.

Warnings of impending drought caused only passing concern that there would not be sufficient water for the government to walk on. Cheerfully we freed Scotland, banned guns, reformed the Bank of England and raised some Pounds 5 billion for health education and welfare to work. Endlessly we, the happy elect, shuffled through the lobbies like massed evacuees from a blitzkrieg of legislation. Those of us who nagged and worried at the aggregation of power seemed a tedious, whingeing minority, the Curmudgeon Tendency within.

But we were right. As the summer faded, the political climate changed. Seemingly unrelated calamities and miscalculations revealed a common theme, an impatience with and disregard for the thoroughly unmodern requirements of accountability and the public display of clean hands; the classic hallmark of total, untrammelled power.

First came Formula One. Not a crime but a calamity. For 10 fatal days the issue remained unaddressed and unresolved. The disposal of Pounds 1m had become a tiresome irrelevance and a serious price was paid. Next came savings. Whatever the case for restricting Peps and Tessas, to present it through a minister apparently the beneficiary of offshore trusts was a masterpiece of insensitivity at the borders of arrogance.

Finally came welfare reform, a subject warranting serious and informed debate and consultation, served up to public and party as a cat's cradle of cuts devoid of coherence or strategy. And even as parliament debated the meagre marginal benefits of the poorest in the land, as loyal members of parliament took grim decisions of conscience or openly wept with anger in the lobbies, the stars and luvvies of stage and screen flocked to Downing Street for the junket of the year. Camelot in session.

So what for the coming year? One thing is certain, we have descended into real politics and the politics of reality. There will be great successes. It is not difficult to predict seminal legislation on the environment and transport. Scotland will, briefly, rejoice: no Camelot here - Elsinore perhaps. Some information will be freed and we may even, don't hold your breath, get some public accounts from the dome.

But the central issue will remain welfare and the debate will be far greater than the sum of its parts and the lamentation of hard choice. It will define the nature of government itself. To the high priests of new Labour, welfare reform is more than a policy, it is the sacrament.

Welfare dependency is perceived as the principle idolatry of the old left couched in the ancient vernacular of redistribution and social justice. It is old, dialectical politics. It is not the Third Way.

It is this crude miscalculation which forms the main danger for the government. There are many in the party, far from the left, to whom the welfare state is an instrument of liberation and not dependence. We do not believe it to be the Ark of the Socialist Covenant. It is simply the method by which a million homes achieve the opportunities and freedoms denied by poverty and want.

This is not old Labour, it is modern and efficient economics. For this reason the government must proceed with caution. Loyalty should not be tested to destruction. This executive is the most powerful of the century and the great and good have performed a mass apostasy to join its myriad committees and reviews; but across the road parliament still exists as its check and balance, and the ghost of Montesquieu walks its corridors.