LET’S FACE IT, the leadership election is basically over. The big figures in the party may have had their doubts, but now they’ve all signed up. The view of the activists seems clear. It’s been going on for ages, but the end is in sight.

All of which makes it frustrating that we know so little about the man who is going to carry off the prize. His so-called tax plans could mean anything; he greets most questions with a careful soundbite designed to deflect his interrogator; and we don’t know if he plans to be the “Heir of Blair” or a decisive break with the past.

So after one of the longest leadership campaigns in history we are all still left pondering — just who is Gordon Brown?

Let me tell you a story. In the early months of William Hague’s leadership of the Conservative Party, his Shadow Cabinet considered making the differences between the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister a central feature of Tory strategy. The disagreement between Brown and Blair over Europe would be a particular target. We held meetings about it, had arguments, sent each other angry memos. In the end, it was decided that it was all too complicated and the plan was dropped.

Good thing too. For it turns out that, although we were correct that Mr Brown and Tony Blair were at odds over Europe, we had one teeny, tiny bit of the argument an insy bit wrong. We ascribed to each of them the opposite position to the one they held. We thought Mr Brown was desperate to enter the single currency and that Mr Blair was trying to stop him.

It’s seven years later. We’ve had all those books, some of them pretty good, and an almost infinite supply of newspaper stories about the Blair-Brown split. It’s become a compulsory course unit for undergraduates in media studies. Yet I still don’t feel any the wiser about what they’ve been arguing about. Do you?

Gordon Brown is simultaneously one of the best-known political figures in the country and one of the least known. What does he really think about public service reform and internal markets? Is he for or against Tony Blair’s neoconservative foreign policy doctrine? What is his view on immigration policy? Does he share Mr Blair’s position on crime and the judiciary? What about the House of Lords? You can try answering the questions, but you’d be guessing. Admit it.

I have in front of me a copy of The Independent on Sunday (now there’s a sentence you don’t read very often). Its political editor had been given time, “an exclusive interview”, with the great man to try to find out what he thinks Tony Blair should do next after last week’s spot of bother. You can imagine them all back at Independent Towers, sitting eagerly by the phone, waiting for their scoop. The phone rings. And they end up leading their front page with the words “Brown: We must listen, learn and connect with voters”. Very illuminating. Thanks a bunch, Gordon.

I think I know the reason the political world is casting around like this and I think I know what Gordon Brown should do about it. The main reason that none of us really knows where Gordon Brown stands on all these issues and what he’d be like as Prime Minister is because he doesn’t know himself. And what should he do about it? Resign.

I don’t mean that the Chancellor should storm out. And I don’t think that Tony Blair should fire him. I just think that Mr Brown would benefit greatly from a short period (Six months? A year?) during which he was relieved of the day-to-day duties of office and was freed from collective responsibility. The two men should agree this as part of an orderly transition to a Brown premiership. Perhaps they could revive the idea of Mr Brown becoming leader of the Labour Party while Mr Blair remains Prime Minister, something they both considered before the last election.

A mad idea? Psychologically flawed? I admit that it is unorthodox, but that’s not the same thing.

For all that Gordon Brown and Tony Blair present themselves as a partnership, and suggest that they agree on everything, it is obvious that they do not. If Mr Blair believed that Mr Brown would simply continue his policies then he would hardly be so desperate to cram in all those White Papers before he leaves Downing Street. The only possible explanation of his behaviour is that he is expecting a different approach to be taken the moment he leaves.

This establishes a basic democratic case that we should be told what that new approach is before Gordon Brown takes over, unopposed and unquestioned. This can only be done if Mr Brown is freed, at least for a time, from the usual constraints that ministers are under.

Beyond this democratic case, there are Gordon Brown’s own best interests to consider. If he is going to make a success of being prime minister then he desperately needs to develop his own programme and ideas for his time in office. Even if he wanted to, he would not be able to rely on the Blair inheritance to see him through. Tony Blair looks exhausted, his agenda more so. The Prime Minister’s extraordinary skills allowed him for a while to win plaudits in the New Statesman and the Daily Mail at the same time; now both are attacking him. The Labour Party won only 36 per cent of the vote at the last election and, just like the Tories, just like any party with such a poor showing, needs to make changes, needs some new thinking. Gordon Brown has to do this and yet while he is Chancellor he can’t.

Last week we found out what kind of underpants the Tory contenders prefer. That’s too much information. And Gordon Brown told us Labour needs to listen. That’s too little information. Surely there’s a middle way.

daniel.finkelstein@thetimes.co.uk

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