Labour launch looks beyond Blair

Analysis
By Nick Assinder
BBC News website political correspondent

Labour's election manifesto launch was a quite extraordinary and probably unique event.

Behind all the policy detail - and there was plenty of that - there was one unmissable message.

And it was about Tony Blair, the symbol of everything New Labour, gradually turning down his volume - immediately, for the election campaign, in favour of the Cabinet team standing alongside him and, ultimately it seems, to his Chancellor Gordon Brown.

The fact that this was his last ever manifesto launch, that he would not be prime minister at the time of the next election, was explicit.

The evidence of a gradual shift of emphasis, even power, away from him was more subliminal. But no one in the audience at London's Mermaid Theatre failed to pick up on it.

As one questioner suggested, it was about de-emphasising his leadership.

This appeared to be the prime minister laying out what he believes is his formidable record, setting the party on course for what he hopes will secure him his place in the history book - with that third term - and signalling his revolution will continue, even under a new regime.

One speech

And if symbolism is anything to go by, the leader of that new regime can be no one other than Gordon Brown.

The very nature of the event drove home this message. Seven Cabinet ministers standing at lecterns displaying only the merest hint of a hierarchy, with just the "big three" of Blair, Brown and Prescott having very slightly raised podiums.

Brown took equal billing

They even shared one speech, with each reading different sections of it. One speech but seven voices, with the prime minister truly only first amongst equals.

And time and again Mr Blair was happy to heap praise on his chancellor, even embracing his vision of creating a "progressive consensus" , first articulated by the chancellor at the last party conference.

For his part, Mr Brown seemed to be offering Mr Blair his legacy as the prime minister whose achievements outdid those of the radical 1945 Labour administration.

Needless to say, none of this was made explicit. The prime minister again insisted he would complete a full third term, despite persistent suggestions that will prove impossible - or even that he has no such intention, but is already planning for an orderly handover to Mr Brown sooner rather than later.

Big vision

These are things this team want deferred until well after the election and it may be that this huge symbolic shift of focus is only for the next three weeks - that the prime minister recognises he is an issue with voters during the poll and wants to minimise the "Blair effect".

Or, alternatively, was this John Prescott's famous tectonic plates moving?

A manifesto for Blair's legacy

The manifesto itself contains little that is startlingly new - there is a renewed commitment not to increase the basic or top rate of income tax, and a fresh pledge to complete Lords reform, for example.

The tax issue and Mr Brown's refusal to rule out increasing national insurance contributions will reappear throughout the campaign.

Unlike the Tory manifesto, it is packed with detail, on everything from Britain's place in the world to banning smoking in public places.

Mr Blair described it as quintessentially New Labour with plenty on continuing reform of public services. But there was nothing to frighten the Brownite horses on the scale of private involvement.

And Mr Blair insisted there was a big vision behind it all - to create an "opportunity society" in Britain.

But mostly it seems to be about embedding the changes already made over the past 8 years and pointing towards policies to ensure they can never be undone.