Theresa May has called time on the Blair/Cameron era and set about bringing back rectitude, sobriety and good sense to public administration

Nearly 20 years have passed since Tony Blair became Prime Minister and inaugurated a revolutionary new way of doing politics.

As Sir John Chilcot’s report into the Iraq invasion devastatingly proved, Mr Blair repudiated Cabinet government, choosing instead to make decisions with a small group of unelected cronies on the Downing Street sofa.

He was contemptuous of Parliament, making announcements of national importance through allies in the Press, rather than (as is proper) in a statement to the House of Commons.

He concentrated on carefully constructed photo opportunities and soundbites which, on closer inspection, turned out to be meaningless. He turned political lying into an art. Mr Blair was Britain’s first celebrity politician.

Regrettably, he was not the last. When David Cameron became Prime Minister six years ago, I had hoped he would turn his back on the Blairite school of politics.

In fact he chose to mimic his hero. Mr Cameron’s resignation honours list, shuffled out late on Thursday afternoon, was characteristic of this meretricious method of governing. It was marred by lavish rewards to Press aides, party donors, and other cronies. George Osborne is not distinguished enough to be a Companion of Honour, one of the greatest accolades any Briton can receive.

Mr Cameron again displayed unfortunate judgment in awarding Craig Oliver, his Press adviser, a knighthood rather than the OBE, which is the most he deserved. In acting this way, David Cameron has diminished British public life.

Admittedly, there are still doubts about whether Mr Cameron’s successor, Theresa May, possesses the moral and intellectual calibre to become a significant Prime Minister. Nevertheless, there are promising signs that she is quietly effecting a revolution in government every bit as profound as the changes inaugurated by Tony Blair when he became Prime Minister in 1997.

Perhaps restoration is a better word than revolution. She has called time on the Blair/Cameron era and set about bringing back rectitude, sobriety and good sense to public administration. She has replaced soundbites with a language which is intelligible to ordinary people.

I admire the way she has responded to the Chilcot report with a no-nonsense rearrangement of the Downing Street furniture, getting rid of Tony Blair’s beloved sofas and replacing them with desks.

Mr Cameron’s resignation honours list, shuffled out late on Thursday afternoon, was characteristic of this meretricious method of governing

Indeed, she has scrapped a great deal of the gimmickry that came before. Junior ministers no longer enjoy ‘the right to attend Cabinet’. Nor have there been any photos of Mrs May in the bright yellow hi-viz jackets so favoured by George Osborne.

She has restored balance to Whitehall by curbing the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Both Tony Blair and David Cameron allowed their Chancellors to exploit their positions at the Treasury to build support through patronage, and interfere in decisions which had nothing at all to do with them.

The new tenant at Number 11, Philip Hammond, seems likely to concentrate all of his attention on the British economy, rather than the niceties of party management, self-promotion and political strategy which obsessed his Machiavellian predecessor George Osborne. It is also encouraging that Mrs May has made an elected politician, Patrick McLoughlin, Conservative Party chairman. There is no danger that he will follow the example of his appalling predecessor, Lord (Andrew) Feldman, and denounce Tory activists as ‘swivel-eyed loons’.

Nor will he attract, as Feldman’s Conservatives did, the unwelcome attention of the police, who have been investigating whether the Tories broke the law on election funding.

Of course Mrs May’s premiership is only in its infancy, and many questions remain unanswered.

We will learn, when Parliament reconvenes next month, whether Mrs May will end the Blair/ Cameron practice of leaking public announcements to the media before announcing them to the House. (If she does, Speaker Bercow, who said 20 years ago that he saw Mrs May as a future prime minister, will approve.)

Given the challenges ahead, with the economy in the balance and Brexit to be negotiated, it would be a blessed relief to hear less, not more, from our political class.

This should be a time for hard work, sober planning, and deeds more than words. After the endless EU referendum campaign and the Tory leadership election, the public have surely had a bellyful of posturing politicians.

Mrs May has made several astute Cabinet appointments. Now, we will discover whether she has the self-knowledge and wisdom to allow her ministers to establish their own personalities and run their own departments.

Mrs May has come up the hard way. She is the first Tory Prime Minister since John Major who has served as a local councillor. This means she is likely to understand the importance of party activists in a way her predecessor did not.

She has become Prime Minister after long experience of political office. Blair and Cameron moved into Downing Street in their early 40s. They had little knowledge of how Parliament worked, and very little understanding of the world. Thus they were dependent for impact on the charisma and excitement of relative youth, which was wrongly mistaken by enthusiasts for political genius.

Mrs May has reached the top the way that most people reach the top — after a long journey. She marks the end of the cult of youth. At 59, she’s 16 years older than Blair and Cameron were when they took over.

The signs are encouraging.

Why fearless Shami has more honour than Dave's cronies

I point blank refuse to join in the outcry against the peerage awarded to Shami Chakrabarti. She has made a huge contribution to British public life

I point blank refuse to join in the outcry against the peerage awarded to Shami Chakrabarti. She has made a huge contribution to British public life.

When she took over the civil rights group Liberty 15 years ago, it had completely lost sight of its principle objective — to stand up for freedom.

It had been captured by a Left-wing clique. The people who ran it, who for a long time included the future Cabinet ministers Patricia Hewitt and Harriet Harman, loved the idea of state control. They used Liberty (then known as the National Council for Civil Liberties) as a front organisation for the Labour Party.

In the Eighties, the NCCL also supported the unspeakably revolting Paedophile Information Exchange, which campaigned to reduce the age of consent to under ten.

This was an organisation which had lost its way. Shami Chakrabarti restored Liberty to the original vision of its magnificent founders, who included the novelists E.M. Forster and H.G. Wells, and the celebrated journalist Kingsley Martin of the New Statesman.

That meant defending individual freedom against an increasingly authoritarian state.

She entered into alliances with Conservative politicians against the illiberal Blair government, of which Patricia Hewitt and Harriet Harman were important members. Liberty then fought a successful campaign to preserve the ancient British freedoms which New Labour viewed with such lacerating contempt.

For example, New Labour was determined to abolish Habeas Corpus, which dates back to Magna Carta and protects any citizen against arbitrary arrest and detention. Chakrabati’s Liberty stopped that. Tony Blair then wanted to get rid of the right to trial by jury, in the name of modernisation. Chakrabarti stopped that, too.

Backed by the Mail, she helped lead a powerful campaign to prevent grotesque Blairite plans to suck up to the United States and extradite Gary McKinnon, the Asperger’s sufferer who was accused of hacking into U.S. military systems. We won that campaign, too, in part thanks to her superb advocacy, and — in the end — the courage of Theresa May in standing up to the Americans.

Shami Chakrabarti is a force for good. She will be an asset to the House of Lords. It is greatly to the credit of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn that he made such a discerning choice.

And what a telling contrast between Shami Chakrabarti and David Cameron’s morally bankrupt collection of Tory donors and overpromoted spin-doctors.

Why are David Cameron and Ed Balls writing their autobiographies? As Tony Blair’s trashy memoirs suggest, they will be too young to reflect wisely and dispassionately on events. By contrast, Ken Clarke, one of Britain’s best post-war Chancellors of the Exchequer, has written his at the right moment.