Blair would charm the middle classes with his smile and then be radical in office. He has set up a commission of inquiry, under the journalist Will Hutton, to assess the rival options for future funding of the London tube system. It's true that, like all independent challengers in politics, Livingstone was supported by a contradictory range of different interests, ranging from mischievous Tories through disaffected Blairites to hopeful members of the old left. But few of them can have suspected that, on a single day in his first month, he would be represented in the media by a pro-royal photo and a canny Blairite political manoeuvre. It's traditional to give leaders 100 days before writing them off, but the trend towards conventionality already looks hard to reverse.
Organisational structures are notoriously hard to reshape.
Businesses which reject the traditional pyramid structure eventually founder on the fact that someone has to sign the cheques and give the orders. A string quartet dispenses with the need for a conductor but, in most cases, one of the players will become the leading personality. In the same way, our political systems are constructed to be run by a leader who is capitalist, monarchistic and desirous of the good opinion of the middle-market press. Whatever your shape on the day of the election, the machine will force you into those contours within weeks. But, amid the apocalyptic commentary, one pundit was relaxed.