IN NORMAL circumstances, election campaigns are, above all else, a choice of two prime ministers. There is an incumbent, trying hard to fight the steady accrual of contempt that is the inevitable by-product of political familiarity. And there is an alternative, seeking to persuade the voters to bury their doubts about his unproven fitness to lead.

In that respect this election is no different from any other. Two men with the usual combination of merits and flaws are presenting themselves as the right one for the top job.

But, in an odd twist, the two this time are not from rival political parties, fighting over marginal constituencies for the undecided vote. They do not represent a choice at all, but rather a stately succession: Tony Blair to Gordon Brown. Labour to Labour.

Nobody outside the Conservative bunker thinks that the man who is going to succeed Tony Blair after this election is Michael Howard. Everyone knows that, barring an intervention on the scale of something like the Apocalypse, some time in the next four years Gordon Brown will finally collect on the deal his friends believe was struck in an Italian restaurant in North London 11 years ago.

I cannot recall a campaign anywhere in modern times like this one. The governing party is fighting an election with one leader, while simultaneously promising a change.

Labour likes to claim that the two-prime-ministers-for-one offer is the dream ticket: Blair’s experience and Brown’s promise; the Prime Minister’s global standing and charisma, backed by the Chancellor’s reliability and integrity. Buy one, get one free.

But out on the stump, at least in the company of the Chancellor this week, it looked a rather different story.

The impression is less of a bargain two-for-one offer, than of a slightly fishy incentive scheme. Buy the current one, even though you don’t really want it, and if you wait a while we promise you’ll get the second, the one you really do want.

Not that Gordon, as everybody calls him, is stoking such disloyal thoughts. In these last few days of his last campaign as the prime-minister-in-waiting, he is going out of his way to play the role of loyal cog in the Blair machine.

On Wednesday he was decoupled from the Prime Minister in body, but not in spirit.

At a chat with the press at the St Thomas Community Centre in Dudley, West Midlands, a reporter from the Dudley Chronicle, dreams of national fame dancing in his head, tried to catch the Chancellor with the first question: “What will a Brown-led Labour government do for the people of Dudley?”

But the Chancellor didn’t get where he is today by being outfoxed by the Dudley Chronicle. Without blinking, he replied: “A Blair–led Labour government . . . ”

And yet it is clear that, in this heartland of post- industrial Britain, it is not another Blair–led government that Labour voters are looking forward to.

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