IT IS FAINTLY hilarious that Tony Blair should choose to deliver a lecture about dysfunctional families just as his Labour relatives slip into open warfare over the succession question. Hark at the Prime Minister’s opening yesterday: “This lecture takes us to the wellsprings of progressive politics. It is about our sovereign value: fairness. It is about potential never explored; talent torn off unused, the inability to live a life free from the charity of others.”

I imagine that is precisely how Gordon Brown feels about the Labour leadership: he has earned it, he deserves it, it is time to unshackle him from Mr Blair and the need to play second fiddle to somebody less talented. Mr Brown was livid after Mr Blair’s interview with The Times last week. Even the Prime Minister’s closest aides admit that he got that one wrong, sounding arrogant and careless of the wishes of his party. It provoked another spat between the so-called ultra-Blairites and Mr Brown’s associates.

In reality everyone is agreed with what David Miliband said on the Today programme yesterday: that the Prime Minister will quit within a year. Mr Blair has told Mr Brown he will be gone by then, although you can hardly blame the Chancellor for not believing him until it is cast in stone.

And that means a public promise. The Prime Minister’s argument that his authority will seep away if he “names a date” is silly. Given that absolutely everyone, up to Mr Blair himself, concedes that this will be his last conference as leader, it is self-defeating not to confirm it in public. It quite unnecessarily makes the Prime Minister appear slippery and evasive. It gives the impression that he is being dragged to the exit, rather than making a dignified parade towards it.

Did I say dignified? Some of Mr Blair’s advisers clearly have other plans, with a truly madly deeply barmy leaked memo yesterday setting out plans for the Prime Minister to ride a wave of manufactured national euphoria out of No 10: “He needs to go with the crowds wanting more. He should be the star who won’t even play that last encore. In moving towards the end he must focus on the future.” Mr Blair should be pictured in “iconic locations” (and on Blue Peter, Songs of Praise and Chris Evans’s Radio 2 show). “He needs to embrace open spaces, he needs to be seen to be travelling on different forms of transport. He needs to be seen with people who will raise eyebrows.”

If he could pause awhile from the applause and only find the time to say that he will be gone within a year, Mr Blair would take the wind out of the sails of those pressing for an earlier exit. Assassinating a leader is dangerous enough; doing so when he is saying his farewells would appear senseless. (And anyway having read that memo I think we want to see this farewell tour played out in all its full, mad glory, don’t we?)

Mr Blair should be planning not for his exit to the tunes of “praise him,praise him”, or the precise date of it — next summer will do — but for what happens afterwards. It is absolutely in Labour’s interest, and the interest of its next leader, that there should be an open contest for the leadership.

Supporters of the Chancellor view this idea as a declaration of war. It is nothing of the sort. There is little chance that Mr Brown would lose such a contest. But as Charles Clarke showed in a stonking speech yesterday, a debate is opening up about the shape of Labour to come, and it has to be held.

Mr Clarke, the former Home Secretary, blew a blast of fresh air into the debate over Labour’s future. Here was a future direction for Europe, partly as a counterweight to an American administration whose judgment is in question; the case for green taxation; a reformed and strengthened local government; better journalism . . . Mr Blair wasn’t spared either. Reform needs to be seen through, Mr Clarke emphasised, “going well beyond the statement of an ambition to its thorough implementation”. It needs consistency at the top: “Obviously it helps where the main leaders of the Government are agreed on the reform to be carried through, which is sometimes the case.” Ouch!

Mr Clarke’s approach amounts to an indictment of Mr Blair’s: government should stop concocting conflict with public sector professionals. Instead it should clearly articulate, see things through, and stem the endless pilots and new initiatives. Less legislation; more implementation. Bye-bye to the worst elements of Blairism.

With a neat distinction between the “traditional Fabians” in the Government who drive change from the centre and the “social entrepreneurs” who would give people and institutions greater freedom to mobilise energy, Mr Clarke concluded that “this lecture is not intended to contribute to a leadership debate”.

Well, the debate is on. What we need now is a contest. Far better to hold this debate within the formal boundaries of a leadership contest (which would also enable Mr Brown to contradict current government policy, which he cannot do at pres- ent) than to appear to be squab- blingbehind the scenes while they are supposed to be governing the country.

I don’t think that Mr Brown would lose that contest. But Mr Clarke is right: “We will not succeed if some new leader or deputy leader produces, like a rabbit out of a hat or Marilyn Monroe out of a birthday cake, a series of policies and pronouncements for us all to admire.” Nor, he might have added, will Labour win if the succession is decided behind the scenes. A stitched-up handover — sorry, “smooth and orderly transition” — appears undemocratic and smells of control freakery and fear. To have — next summer, say — the sort of open discussion of ideas and approaches that served the Conservatives so well last summer, conducted amicably and responsibly, with somebody actually winning the argument and the mandate, could only serve Labour, and its next leader, well.

Resolving their differences behind closed doors is not an option for this particular family. They are going to have to wrestle it out in public.

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