The boyish image has faded. He's frayed and quicker to take offence

  • The Observer,
Plastic bands discolour with time. Their rubber starts to perish and becomes more brittle. The same has happened to Tony Blair. In many ways he remains the slim-hipped, posh boy who stood before the 1994 Labour conference, raised his head and gazed misty-eyed into the distance. How has this consummate performer - for that is how we sketchwriters measure him - changed over the 13 conferences since? Many of the mannerisms have survived his decade in No 10, not least the choking 'Y-knows' and 'I means', classic delaying phrases when he is exasperated or needs to tickle an audience. He still joshes the media - 'you guys' - at the start of a news conference. He still has that squint, although the glasses he started to wear in 2001 now disguise that oddly bewitching characteristic.

Blair's hand gestures have survived, from the vertical palm chop-chop when he is mentally separating one problem from another, to the raised index finger when he's in trouble. There is also the rising, pointing spiral to illustrate the barminess of an Opposition argument. We haven't seen so much of that one recently.

Then there is the smile - oh, the smile: Alfred E Neuman's Mad magazine boy, Jack Nicholson as the Joker in Batman. In the mid-Nineties, it made a welcome change from John Major, whose top lip would cautiously sheath the top of his teeth like a lizard's eyelid. The Blair smile seemed carefree, as brilliant as anything in a Colgate ad. It would ping - still does - the moment a TV camera fired up its white overhead bulb. Blair, the ruthless operator in private, would instantly become everyone's friend.

What made the smile even more appealing was his bad teeth, classic angled old gravestones. The only male smile that comes close in British public life belongs to the new England soccer manager, Steve McLaren, but his teeth, while more orderly, are not so engaging. New Labour image-makers were wise not to ask Tony's dentist to straighten them. Blair found a winning image template back in the early Nineties. He was not so much boyish as the young father next door, the sort who'd help his wife pull the pushchair out of the car boot and put the children to bed. The age changes have been the result of age and gathered gravitas, rather than artful alterations.

Take the hair: there's less of it now and it has changed colour (not always from brown to grey). His barber tempted him briefly with a 'Caesar' cut, and he had a George Clooney phase. Thatcher used to restyle her bulletproof barnet from time to time, but a male politician needs to beware becoming too much the dandy.

On his first outing at the dispatch box in 1997, Blair wore flashy cufflinks. They are seldom seen nowadays. Some of the other peacockish outfits have moved to the back of the Carole Caplin wardrobe.

Goodbye the floaty shirts seen that first prime ministerial summer in Tuscany and, later, the terrible Paul Smith sleeve with the motif of a naked woman. The tight-crotch jeans have retreated - or maybe popped - although Blair retains a svelte girth. Remember the nutcracker denims on that US trip just after George Bush's election? Young Tony put the Camp into David. These days it is more likely to be chinos or slacks.

The glottal stop mockney accent of the early years is heard less frequently, but Blair has not changed his voice as much as Thatcher did. On the advice of Gordon Reece, Thatcher dropped her tone until it was close to that of Windsor Davies. Blair's timbre is still a light hock, a fluting tenor. He does not drink much and nor smoke. The voice creaks only when tired.

Term-three Blair is more statesmanlike, less fizzy. Once Alastair Campbell had faded, he allowed verbs to re-enter his speeches. Security worries have cut him off from the public more, but he has not yet lost the taste for hammy photocalls. His energy has been remarkable, even if a 'W' shape of weary lines appeared on his brow.

Perhaps the biggest change has been that, particularly since the Iraq war, he has been quicker to take offence. Goodness, he must be tired. How hard it must be to resist the temptation to take a swipe at an impertinent hack or an uppity backbencher who comes to Downing Street with some complaint. But early Blair knew that a calm and reasonable manner won votes. Early Blair would never have been so dismissive of last month's round-robin letter writers. Old rubber bands do tend to fray and - eventually - snap.

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