So the government has a real story to tell after all, one with a beginning, a middle and an end. The end has still to be reached, but so far it is a narrative of substance, not just a plot full of "eye-catching" gimmicks, which Tony Blair sought when he wrote his revealing memo at the end of April. Gordon Brown has taken us to the halfway point of the story with the unveiling of his spending review. Blair guided us towards this moment when he admitted on BBC1's Question Time a couple of weeks ago that Britain's public services suffered from "serious underinvestment".
Like all good stories, this one is multi-layered and complex. The beginning is not so straightforward as it seems. Come to think of it, nor is the middle.
Brown laid out the superficial outline in his Commons statement: for three years, a Labour government showed its economic prudence. It was tough on spending and tough on the causes of spending. The national debt was reduced. The economy boomed, but boomed in a stable manner. Economic stability had been earned and now it was possible to spend some money. Thank you and good night.
This beguiling narrative understates the degree to which the Prime Minister has undergone something of a conversion in his attitude to public spending. The story implies that each stage was neatly planned from the beginning, disguising what I would call a prime ministerial U-turn if such a term were not regarded as pejorative. I do not wish to be pejorative. I welcome Blair's recognition that Britain suffers from severe underinvestment and that public spending is a large part of the solution.
But this has not always been his view. Less than two years ago, on the eve of the Labour Party conference, Blair announced that he expected taxes and public spending to fall. "That is the way the world is going," he declared, as if there was not a great deal he could do about it. Was he saying this as a tactic, to bolster his image as an iron Prime Minister, knowing that he would be spending billions in the summer of 2000? I do not think so.
Treasury insiders used to bemoan Downing Street's worries about some of the modest spending increases announced in the government's first three years. "Where's the money coming from?" the Blairites used to ask, as a few pennies were handed out here and there. Yet more recently, it has been the Blairites who have put pressure on the Treasury to spend, spend, spend.
What has changed? Blair's pragmatism, a weakness when chasing headlines and manically trying to respond to William Hague's incoherent populism, can also prove a strength. One way or another, he is more in touch with voters than any other prime minister in recent history. He is the first to hold lengthy, unrehearsed exchanges with audiences of public service workers on television programmes such as Newsnight. On these programmes, participants did not celebrate a revolution in the NHS and education; they wanted more money. So did Lord Winston in his pivotal NS interview earlier this year.
Meanwhile, the focus groups were suddenly placing transport at the top of their agenda. Even the Mail was crying out for more public money, although it now shrieks that the additional spending is irresponsible. Apart from anything else, political expedience demanded public investment.
Sometimes, the media and the focus groups generate a curiously hysterical caution in Downing Street. But their influence ensures that, contrary to popular perception, Blair will never be an arrogant, aloof prime minister. How could he be, when he regularly receives Philip Gould's gloomy memos which, in the interests of freedom of information, someone in the government seems to be making publicly available on a weekly basis?
If anything, Blair has passed Brown in his belief that we need high sums of spending. Brown always had a sense of the story. He had always planned to spend some money when it was politically prudent to do so. This does not make him one of life's big spenders. He has fought hard in the spending negotiations, demanding to know where every penny would go. For the second time, he has lost battles over Britain's excessive defence spending. There have been occasions when other ministers have sought the intervention of Blair to ensure that the prudent Chancellor paid out. Even the good-natured Jack Straw has been known to return from his visits to the Treasury exclaiming "Bloody Brown".
Yet the differences between Blair and Brown are too easily exaggerated. Blair has not become a reckless spender, either. Brown's instinct is to cut taxes in his pre-election Budget. Similarly, Blair believes that, along with crime, tax remains a problem for the government, especially petrol tax. He is much more worried about petrol tax than the euro, which he believes will be a vote-loser for the Tories. Yes, there is a new political divide, between a government that is tackling the squalor of Britain's public services at last and the Conservatives, who have ceased to make any sense at all on the issue. But the government will blur the dividing lines by cutting taxes before the election.
So how will the story end? No minister is certain that huge bureaucratic bodies such as the NHS will respond effectively to the need for change. There are questions, also, about whether, given the government's timidity over raising taxes, the high levels of spending can be sustained over a long period.
Like all good stories, no one can tell what the end will be. All that can be said for now - and it is quite something to say after all the problems faced by previous Labour governments - is that this is a story with a happy middle.
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