The Sketch: Iain Duncan Thing had one winning feature. And now Blair's pinched it

Anyway, here we are at New Dawn II. The fifth anniversary of Labour's victory. Where others might put on a new suit to mark the occasion, Tony Blair has put on a new personality.

His performance yesterday floored the Sketch. I wasn't the only one who was floored. The Prime Minister has decided to reincarnate himself and the Tories have pretty much had it for another election.

Poor Mr Duncan Thing was floored parliamentarily; more comically, Gordon Brown was floored psychologically. Downing Street used to say that Mr Brown was flawed psychologically. It's come to the same thing, these days.

The Chancellor sat there like a mental patient, hunched over his lap, gripping a sheaf of papers with one hand and an elbow with the other, too tense even to rock to and fro, moaning. His leadership aspirations must have been fatally undermined because Tony Blair has taken over the best part of the Chancellor's act, and is succeeding in doing it very much better.

As a result of Blair's reinvention two years ago, William Hague lost his Commons dominance (the last, and in many ways, the least of his achievements).

It's too recent to remember. Come with me. Hague and Blair went at question time like duelling tenors. The roaring and raving were heroically staged. Hague was hilarious, Blair was pathetic, the noise was terrific. This was the era of killer fact. "Killer fact!" Blair would yelp and issue some astonishing mendacity about street crime. The back benches, more often than not, joined in as a stomping, whole-company chorus line.

More often than not, Blair lost the afternoon's exchange, but then he changed and never lost again. He did it by stepping out of the comic opera role and talking normally. It was devastating. Imagine the tenor stopping the orchestra and telling the audience, in the voice of Rik Mayall, that all this wasn't actually, you know, real.

So Mr Blair sat back, amused, watching Mr Hague playing by, and possibly with, himself. "Yes, yes, very good," he'd say to well turned jibes, "he's very good at the jokes, we all enjoy the jokes but when it comes to policy he doesn't have much to contribute."

Hague got so rattled he stopped making jokes and then it was sadly shown there was almost nothing there at all.

Today, Iain Duncan Smith is pitched as the manly alternative to Tony Blair's hectic artifices.

But yesterday, the Prime Minister added a lethal new character to the Which Blair Project. He rose above the dispatch box with a whole new masculine presence. He gave us the voice, the manner and the actions of a public school scrum-half whose sister has been insulted in a public bar. Fast, unsmiling, well modulated but keeping to the lower register, he bundled the Leader of the Opposition.

This Blair is one that will not be cowed or contradicted by misguided fools (his Cabinet). This Blair is impatient; this Blair won't put up with feral children or the causes of feral children (the feral parents). This Blair has a fire in his belly (possibly lit by the flames of his burning pants, but let that pass). This Blair is so possessed with confidence he doesn't need courage. He didn't attempt to evade, avoid or sidestep Iain Duncan Smith, he just ran straight over him.

The Tories, who are lamentably flat-footed about these things, won't work out how to deal with this new character. Mr Blair's taken all the qualities that Mr Smith wants to project and has amplified them for himself.

He's found the one small bit of Mr Duncan Smith's personality that he can use and he's gone and pinched it.

Simoncarr75@hotmail.com