All men are mortal - and that includes Mr Blair

n politics, nothing succeeds like success. If Mr William Hague had announced the names of his new shadow cabinet precisely a week ago, people would have responded as the aged, deaf Duke of Wellington did when Lord Derby told him the names of his new cabinet. They would have said: "Who? Who?" Alternatively they would have remarked, as Sir Julian Critchley doubtless did: "What a shower!"

But the lapse of a few days made a great difference to the way Mr Hague's new collection was regarded, in the newspapers at any rate. In that short period the European election had taken place: humiliation for the People's Party, triumph for the Conservatives, justification for Mr Hague. All of a sudden, the politicians around him had acquired a shinier patina. Thus Mr Andrew Lansley, to whom the Tories attributed much of their success, was the new Peter Mandelson; while Mrs Theresa May was to be the Margaret Thatcher of the millennium. To quote Wellington again: if you believe that, you will believe anything.

Still, the election was healthy for politics. Even the tiny turnout was healthy in its way. If the election was about the euro, as Mr Hague kept saying it was, the voters showed more knowledge of European government than he did. For the United Kingdom members of the European Parliament will exercise no power at all over whether their country joins the single currency. The small turnout was healthy too because it demonstrated, if it demonstrated anything, that the voters were not enamoured of the prospect of voting, not for a person or persons, but for a list of party worthies selected and placed in order of preference by another group of apparatchicks.

The election was healthiest in its demonstration that we did not yet live in a one-party state. We still live in a two-party state. A few weeks ago I was correct in thinking that the Conservatives would do well, and deservedly so, inasmuch as there is any justice in these matters. Where I was wrong was in predicting that the Liberal Democrats would do well also.

By this I did not mean only that they would pick up seats because of the new, proportional system, as they duly did (though the corrupt system supported by the Liberal Democrats is by no means perfect in its proportionality). I meant also that they would pick up votes because disgruntled or merely bored Labour supporters would vote for them instead. This did not happen. The Labour supporters in question either voted Conservative or, in greater numbers, stayed in front of their television sets.

Afterwards Mr Paddy Ashdown, relying on the increased number of seats, claimed a good result. In fact it was a lamentable result. To poll only 13 per cent of the votes was shameful. Mr Ashdown must have known this. Why then pretend? It is not as if he has to go through the motions any longer. He is about to embark on a career of public busybodying in some international organisation or other, though he would be better advised to stay quietly at home in this country or to cultivate his garden in Burgundy.

What the election demonstrates is that the old political law still operates with the Liberal Democrats: they do well when Conservative supporters are reacting against Conservative governments. Those supporters have done it at by-elections too numerous to list conveniently. They did it at the general elections of February 1974, 1983, 1987, 1992 and, above all, 1997, when Mr Ashdown won 46 seats, though with a share of the vote - 16.8 per cent - lower than the one obtained by the Liberal Democrats at any of the previous general elections just listed. It may be that the latest and most substantial Liberal revival is destined to go the same way as its pre-decessors not so much because Mr Tony Blair has claimed some central ground as because Mr Blair is the prime minister of what is still nominally a Labour government.

It may be also that the Liberal Democrats did badly because of their enthusiasm for the euro. Their prospective voters did not emulate those Liberal voters of old who disapproved of both main parties' supposed softness over immigration and were consequently admirers of Enoch Powell. Though the European Parliament has no say whatever in whether we sign up to the euro, Mr Hague clearly persuaded some of the people some of the time that the election had something to do with it. That was his greatest triumph, greater if anything than the result itself. He showed the paladins of Millbank that you could not sink an issue simply by ignoring it. As was remarked of Joseph Chamberlain, he made the weather.

This has had several consequences. Mr Blair once again appears mortal and rejoins the human race, which he left briefly on 1 May 1997 to ascend into heavenly regions. At Prime Minister's Questions last week he looked distinctly uneasy. People want Mr Mandelson to come back. Even he cannot make Mr Blair immortal. What he can do is improve the electoral machinery in time for 2001-02. Having paid his debt to society, Mr Mandelson is now ready to be re-integrated into the political community. That, at least, seems to be the theory. It has already been put into practice in the case of Mr Tim Yeo. He had to leave Mr John Major's government five years ago after fathering an illegitimate child, the mother being a Conservative councillor. He is now back on the opposition front bench. It is all great humbug from start to finish, practised largely by the Sun and the Daily Mail, which have terrorised successive prime ministers.

With Mr Mandelson, likewise, I could not see (as I wrote at the time) that it was a high crime and misdemeanour to borrow pounds 373,000. The members of the Standards Committee are said to be divided on party lines about it. The division is, it appears, not about whether he was less than frank with the permanent secretary of his department but with the Britannia Building Society. This is no business of any parliamentary committee. It is entirely a matter between Mr Mandelson and the society, who stated at the time that they were perfectly happy about his actions.

He is said to be prepared to drive a hard bargain with Mr Blair. It is, however, unlikely to include the demand that Mr Blair honour his pledge to hold a referendum on electoral reform in the present Parliament - or even to hold one at all. After the European election, proportional representation is about as popular in the Labour Party as the restoration of the Stuart monarchy. This is illogical because the alternative vote topped up from a party list, which is what Lord Jenkins proposed, is different from the system used last week. If I were Lord Jenkins I should not be best pleased, having done a lot of hard work to produce a lucid and readable report.

Will the other referendum, on the euro, trickle similarly into the sands? It is due only after the election. But what if Mr Hague fights the election on the euro, as he says he is going to do, and Labour still wins? What then? What indeed! Mr Blair will be able to claim with some plausibility that the sovereign people have already spoken and that there is consequently no need for a referendum, which is superfluous. Mr Hague's historic function will then have ceased.