Chameleons and reptiles
Luntz is, incidentally, an expert on British politics too, having convened a televised focus group of potential Conservative voters during the party’s leadership campaign that gave Cameron a useful boost. He is incredulous about the imminent departure of Blair from Downing Street. “You Brits are crazy,” he told radio listeners recently. We have taken leave of our senses by getting rid of a leader of world-class rank, apparently.

Well, Blair certainly is a situation senser of world rank. Goffee wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review about one week in the life of Blair in July 2005. It was the week in which he travelled from Singapore to win the 2012 Olympics, to Gleneagles, where he forced the G8 leaders to face up to the twin challenges of Africa and climate change, and back to London when the 7/7 bombers struck. Goffee wanted to call the article ‘The Authentic Chameleon’ (the editors insisted instead on ‘Managing Authenticity’). “He was very different in each situation, but they all connected to something that was nevertheless genuine,” he explains.

That paradox of an authentic chameleon sums up a key dilemma of political leadership. Blair’s skill at responding to the unexpected and seeking to transform situations to his advantage – the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, is always cited – has undermined his appeal as people think he is just an actor.  Yet, when the Labour Party tried to stick the chameleon charge on Cameron, it gave up because it turned out to do the Tory leader no harm at all. (All it did was give him some good lines for speeches, such as when he opened an address to Westminster journalists: “Fellow reptiles!”)

Luntz is one of many who think that, if the British electorate is tired of Blair, the answer is to give them a new version of the same model – they will like him the way they used to like Blair.

That is the difference between politics on the one hand and enterprise (private and public sector) on the other. Business leaders always have a record by which they can be judged, and all the management theorists agree that building a successful corporate culture requires dedication and rigour over many years. In politics, we are choosing between a record and a guess. As Brookes observes, “Britain may need collaborative leadership rather than Gordon Brown’s autocratic style. David Cameron has more in his favour in that sense, a listening style, bringing people in. But whether that will be realised in practice is another thing.”

John Rentoul is chief political commentator for The Independent on Sunday and a biographer of Tony Blair.