Urbane guerrilla

THE many books and films about the New Labour government, surely Britain's most documented post-war administration, never need sexing up. Drama is ensured when the cast includes Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson: respectively a political natural with a zeal to “reorder this world”, his Nixonian neighbour, contorted by ambition and early traumas, and an Iago of a third man. Even the supporting cameos—Alastair Campbell, the young Ed Balls—were compelling.

Despite some radical policies, the coalition is a duller bunch. David Cameron is as blandly well-rounded as his face. Nick Clegg is another man of privilege, decency—and plainness. Faced with the bloodlessly technocratic likes of Andrew Lansley, Theresa May and Chris Huhne (the health, home and energy secretaries), the Labour opposition might be forgiven for invoking Disraeli's judgment on Gladstone's front bench: “a range of exhausted volcanoes...not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest”. That is, were the current Labour lot not so run-of-the-mill themselves.