George Osborne sought yesterday to seize the standard of post-Blairite public service reform.

As the Paramount Chief cut a swath through Africa, no one commands the battleground back home. Mr Osborne’s raid is an attempt to divide Labour, but it also risks dividing the Conservative Party.

The Tories’ calculation is that, despite Iraq, the Blair brand was unbeatable, while the Brown brand is beatable. In claiming the Blairite mantle, the Tories want to portray Gordon Brown, let alone most deputy leadership contenders, as abandoning the centre ground on reform and reverting to the left.

In his Policy Exchange speech yesterday, Mr Osborne argued that the Conservatives and Tony Blair agree that “in large part, public services need to be publicly funded out of general taxation” (so no social insurance); that they need to be well funded; that “user choice is a powerful tool for improving public services”; and in “the need for a diversity of provision”.

Mr Osborne then sought to carve out distinctive ground. While agreeing on the ends with Mr Blair, the Tories disagree on the means: what he calls “the greatest centralisation of power since the Attlee Government”.

Moreover, “the growing consensus between the current Prime Minister and the Conservative Party does not appear to include the next Prime Minister”.

Mr Brown is depicted as cool to diversity of provision in health, while some younger Brownites talk about the limits of choice, as opposed to voice. So, in the Tory view, “the roadblocks to reform are being put in place”.

This is an exaggeration and, justifiably, nothing infuriates Mr Brown more than to be described as antireform.

He has backed the expansion of city academies, though has said little yet on his general reform plans, apart from promising to talk and consult.

While Mr Blair and his close allies push their reform agenda, there is otherwise a vacuum as the postBlair generation seeks to carve out a new and different-sounding agenda. Much of this is in the impenetrable jargon of empowerment, which left-wing writers believe is necessary if they are to be taken seriously. That obscures, rather than clarifies, the policy debate.

According to Mr Osborne, only the Tories can take forward Mr Blair’s recent good intentions because Mr Brown cannot and will not.

So, as David Willetts has argued, the academies programme will be developed as part of an expansion of new places and the much easier creation of new schools. There would be a quasi-voucher system, within the taxpayer-funded sector, together with personal health budgets, notably for the disabled.

Mr Osborne has been attacked on the conservativehome website for identifying too closely with a flawed and poor Blair leagacy.

But Mr Osborne and the leadership need to move beyond their current triangulating between Blair, Brown and Cameron, in order to give voters a clearer idea of what they would do in office, what is the substance of the Tory brand.

Similarly, soon after June 27, the Brown team needs to end the introspective reassessment on the Centre-Left and make clear where it stands.

The key, as Mr Blair rightly argues, is to maintain the pace of reform. Any pulling back or weakening would be electoral suicide, as well as the wrong policy.

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