Alan Watkins: It's not a contest that causes bitterness, but the lack of one. Ask Gordon Brown

As the date of Mr Tony Blair's departure approaches - how slowly it approaches, like a train getting into Durham Station - the Prime Minister is increasingly fond of making an appeal to history. He tells us that history will be his judge.

Twenty or so years ago, in the declining period of the Social Democratic Party, when Dr David Owen was still its leader, Lord Owen (as he duly became) was equally prone to calling posterity in aid. Whereupon Sir Peter Tapsell, our greatest living backbencher, told the House of Commons that posterity might have better things to do with its time.

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As then, so now. Posterity - or history - may have other preoccupations. It may never even get round to it. There is still no fair assessment of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1905-08).

In these circumstances, Mr Blair should, as Campbell-Bannerman's successor was to put it, wait and see. There is not the slightest need to mix up the question of Mr Blair's historical reputation, his "legacy", as his friends and supporters call it, with the separate question of who is to succeed him. And yet, this is precisely what is happening. Positions are being adopted, attitudes struck.

So, friends and supporters of Mr Gordon Brown are taking up opposing positions to those of Mr Blair. A couple of months ago, it was quite possible - difficult though still possible - to have a rational argument about whether there should be a party election for Mr Blair's successor.

I deplore, by the way, the modern usage, which has now spread to the expensive press, to substitute "argument" for "row", as in: "They were having a bit of an argument, like," when the pots and pans were flying merrily in all directions and the constabulary had been summoned to intervene in a "domestic".

There was an overwhelming argument for such a contest in more peaceable circumstances. There still is. Since 1922, when Ramsay MacDonald was elected Chairman and Leader of the Parliamentary Party, there has been an election. The only leaders not to be elected were Arthur Henderson and George Lansbury, who were both products of the break-up of the National government in 1931. Both Harold Wilson and James Callaghan were called "Leader of the Parliamentary Party", and Michael Foot was the first Leader of the Labour Party to be so called.

Mr Foot, however, was the last leader to be elected by the old - and, in my opinion, better - system, of Labour MPs alone. Neil Kinnock and John Smith were elected under the new electoral college, while Tony Blair was elected by the even newer electoral college, which eliminated the trade union block vote - in theory, at any rate.

It is certainly fair to point out that the circumstances in 2007 are exceptional. For 13 years two men have been chained to each other in what the psychologists call a hate-hate relationship. It would probably have been better for everybody's peace of mind, including Mr Brown's, if he had fought Mr Blair in 1994.

After all, this is what Mr John Prescott and Mrs Margaret Beckett did at the time. Just as it is a popular political fallacy that Mr Foot was brought to the leadership by the electoral college, so it is widely believed that, Mr Brown having been got out of the way by an unlikely combination of Mr Peter Mandelson and Sir Gerald Kaufman, Mr Blair was allowed to proceed on his way unimpeded by anybody.

The paradox of Mr Brown's position, or that of his friends and supporters, is that they no longer want a contest of any kind. Yet they have appointed a campaign manager in the person of Mr Jack Straw, the Georgi Malenkov of the present administration and, no doubt, administrations still to come. What is the point of having a campaign manager if you are not going to have a campaign? What indeed!

The National Executive Committee, if I understand its decision properly, has denied the possibility of any formalised campaign if Mr Brown is out on his own. Mr Brown will be merely returned unopposed. What, then, is the purpose of a campaign committee, if there is to be no campaign? In the days of J V Stalin, I believe, the first members of the audience to stop clapping at the party meeting were taken out and promptly shot, whether on account of age, infirmity or lack of enthusiasm for the leader. In much the same way must Mr Straw be registering support for Mr Brown - or the lack of it - with suitable rewards or penalties to follow.

As Mr Brown's supporters are signing up as campaigners when there is no campaign, so Mr Blair's supporters are mounting a challenge where there is no real challenger. My own view is that there ought to be an election, not to deprive Mr Brown of his legitimate expectations, but to satisfy the history of the Labour Party. Instead an election is taken, by friends of Mr Brown, as a hostile act; and, by friends of Mr Blair, as a safeguarding of Mr Blair's famous legacy.

For some time now, it is true, the search has been on to come up with anyone but Brown, or ABB, as the wags have it. The first up was another "B", Mr David Blunkett. But for a variety of reasons - or, rather, they were two fairly precise reasons - he soon fell by the wayside. Mr Blunkett, incidentally, has an acidulous solicitor. After almost any story about his several falls from office, there is likely to follow a legal "correction" pointing out that he was never dismissed but resigned instead. Be it so, as the barristers like to put it.

After a short interregnum by Mr Alan Milburn, that former minister was succeeded by Mr Alan Johnson. For a time, high hopes were reposed in Mr Johnson. Prudently, he decided to go for the deputy leadership instead. Mr Charles Clarke is the latest to call for a contest, not with Mr Clarke as a contender, but rather with Mr David Miliband. Such is the influence of television these days that two or three performances on toxic turkeys have been enough to transform a young man of about nineteen and a half to a candidate to be the next Prime Minister of this country.

Perhaps Mr Clarke should have a go himself. In 1960, Anthony Greenwood, a popular but lightweight figure in the party of that time, decided to stand against Hugh Gaitskell as leader, to try to smoke out Wilson as the opposing candidate. Greenwood then resolved to do just the same as Wilson but he was persuaded to withdraw in favour of Wilson, who lost to Gaitskell but did not disgrace himself. If Mr Clarke, or someone else, offered to stand initially against Mr Brown, would Mr Miliband step in? Somehow I doubt it.

There is, however, a misreading of history on the part of Mr Brown's supporters. In all the elections of modern times, there has been hardly any sediment of bitterness or ill-feeling afterwards. Paradoxically, the bitterness and ill-feeling have come after Mr Brown omitted to contest an election all those years ago.

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