The missing power that matters today is the power of citizens to affect the world around them And that power is

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The missing power that matters today is the power of citizens to affect the world around them And that power is at least partly recoverable. In Australia, Blair put it like this: ''The central question of modern democratic politics is how to provide security during revolutionary change.''The problem, though, is that traditional government structures cannot provide that security - again, something Blair acknowledged in Australia. Echoing a long-time theme of Paddy Ashdown's, he spoke dismissively about ''vote for us and we'll cure it'' politics, and noted: ''As a result of social and economic progress, government does not have the power over its citizens to enforce the change it wants.''This sums up Blair's dilemma as a radical politician Many politicians yearn for ''power over citizens'' It's gone It's history. These wire-pullers and influence-pedlars are infinitely more powerful than any doddery home-grown clique. A Labour government which fails to regulate them fairly could hardly be called reformist.The second, more positive, part of the task is to give people a stronger sense of ownership over their lives and communities to balance the great global forces beyond national regulation or control. Blair spoke of the old boys in the City; the real old-boys' network today, the new establishment, were the people listening to him at Hayman Island in Australia.

This means, first, confronting some of the new sources of power head-on. Corporate Britain and the multinationals have accumulated great powers over the past decade; as the abortive British Gas shareholders' revolt showed recently, there is a big agenda of corporate reform and regulation for Labour to tackle.And it includes the monopolistic challenges of the Murdoch empire itself. The centre of our society has veered away from the social values, all those quasi-religious, humane and hard-learnt lessons of civilised life which Blair, for one, is in public life to assert.The great task for politics now is to tilt the balance back. Power has been privatised, or at least passed from states to corporations and to markets. Few of us feel tied down or held back by the House of Lords or restrictive practices among barristers.

It is all a bit beside the point.To understand what institutions and forces Labour needs to take on, we have to remember the big picture. They included the hereditary peerage, restrictive practices in the legal system, the ''old boys' network'' in the City, the obsolescence of the parliamentary system and the public school-biased intake of Oxford and Cambridge.These are all worthy enemies, though I await with some scepticism Labour plans to reform Oxbridge entrance, the public schools and City networking (the latter being more meritocratic than ever before, largely because the good chaps have been bought out by Germans, Swiss, Japanese and other non-Etonians) But this list doesn't seem big enough or central enough. She never properly confronted this apparent contradiction, either at the time or afterwards. We must assumeshe believed simply that it was worth it - energy is coarse and revolutions leave casualties.For Blair, as a ''left Thatcherite'', the questions are straightforward: which important institutions does this other moralist intend to take on, and how precisely does he hope to unleash a similar amount of energy?In Australia, Blair listed what appeared to be some of his initial targets.