There are policy commissions which submit proposals to the worthy, if unwieldy, national policy forums. This year three papers – on crime, health, and the economy – will wend their way back from those forums to the joint Policy Committee which will draw up the final documents for the party conference.Against that background it is always possible to float publicly a policy proposal, as Mr Blair himself did on the closed shop before the last election. There is, as Shadow Cabinet members have since been falling over themselves to explain, a clear mechanism for formulating policy. Now, the ripples of anger are spreading worryingly, unpredictably, through draughty Labour committee rooms up and down the country.None of that alters the fact that by stirring the education pot as he did during the New Year news vacuum, Mr Blunkett has made life a little more difficult not only for his leader but also for his party. The shell grottoes, wilderness, quincunxes and parterres of Perec’s ingenuity are so successfully distracting that we might easily lose sight of the book’s more insidious underlying design. Add to this the dazzling tightrope acts performed by the translator and the process of bamboozlement becomes a thoroughly pleasurable experience.Adair’s is an astonishing achievement; you can feel him positively dancing with exultation at outfoxing Perec in the subtlety of his transpositions.

He magisterially ignores the protocol which assigns perpetual second-footman status to translators. Rende rings of Poe’s “The Raven” as “Black Bird” and a certain celebrated soliloquy by “Shakspar” as “Living or Not Living”, let alone a sublime Miltonian transmutation into “On His Glaucoma”, deserve instant anthologising.Perec’s book, with all its subtexts and nuances and the ghoulish persistence of a lurking horror in the midst of verbal tricksiness, is absorbing enough. His formidably proficient Angliciser, in remaining faithful to the essence of the text, has createdan independent work, both enabling and rivalling its original.. Anyone who doubts that the fracas over David Blunkett and the idea of VAT on public school fees did real damage to Labour should consider one of the unpublicised results that flowed from it. Gordon Brown was due to launch a New Year offensive on economicfairness, highlighting the party’s commitment to a national minimum wage and the need to stop the state subsidising underpaying employers through the social security system; stepping up pressure on Kenneth Clarke to commit himself not to seek to reimpose VAT on fuel at 17.5 per cent; and building on its onslaught against top executive salaries. In the event he felt forced to delay it because of the disarray in which the Shadow Cabinet appeared to find itself.

To compound the problem Martin O’Neill, the energy spokesman, seemed to tilt the party towards a new-found welcome for nuclear power. Allthis coincided with a new campaign to secure support for a new Clause IV of the party constitution – a campaign interpreted by many as evidence that the leadership was beginning to be apprehensive that a victory could not be guaranteed.
For many in the Labour Party there is an attractive case for imposing VAT on public school fees. It would raise revenue, though if applied solely to private schools probably not more than between £100m and £200m. And it would no doubt encourage greater use of the state system by articulate and ambitious parents whose demands for higher standards would become more audible.