Where are all the Blairites now that they have something to celebrate?

Tony Blair continues to break political records. This weekend he takes over from Clem Attlee as the Labour prime minister who has served for the longest continuous period in government. Already he holds the record as the only Labour leader to win two successive landslide election victories. These milestones matter, but probably not as much as they matter to Blair himself. For New Labour, born out of 18 years in opposition, winning elections and staying in power are important ends in themselves.

So much so that Blair is already giving a great deal of thought as to how he will win a third term. He has asked the former Cabinet minister Stephen Byers to seek out some fresh ideas for the next manifesto. With some spare time on his hands, Byers is dutifully consulting on what those ideas might be. Among those with whom he is exchanging thoughts is his old friend, the former health secretary Alan Milburn. Although Milburn is spending more time with his family, he is planning a modest return to the political fray. As well as chatting occasionally with Byers about the next manifesto, he will make a few speeches in the autumn on the future direction of the Government. They are both part of a growing number of Blairites who function on the outer fringes of power. Like Peter Mandelson and - before very long - Alastair Campbell, they discuss political matters in private with the Prime Minister, or with each other, before getting on with the rest of their lives.

That is what seems to happen to so-called Blairites. They soar and then disappear into a dark blue sky, leaving their other less glamorous colleagues to plod on. As the Prime Minister breaks his latest political record, he finds himself leading a party without many Blairites in positions of authority or in any positions at all. At the start of his leadership he envisaged with unusual confidence a radically different pattern. In an interview with me in July 1996 he said that over time the Labour Party would become more Blairite "in the same way the Conservative Party became more Thatcherite". Ever since, commentators have been predicting when the Blairite breakthrough might happen. Only a few months ago some suggested that victory in the war would be the moment Blair would brush aside Brown and the Brownites, along with any non-Brownites with a whiff of old Labour about them, and create a Cabinet of pure Blairites.

The precise opposite has happened. Milburn went, and Campbell will go in the autumn. The new chairman of the Labour Party is Ian McCartney, a pragmatist to the end of his fingertips, but not a stereotypical Blairite. The favourite to replace Campbell is David Hill, a former Labour spin-doctor. Although he spun tirelessly for New Labour, Blair regarded him with some wariness. In the late 1990s he went as far as vetoing Hill's appointment as director of communications at the Education department. Hill was not regarded as Blairite enough. Now Blair is contemplating his return at the heart of Downing Street.

Over at the Commons the new Leader of the House, with a brief to range widely, is Peter Hain, someone who is almost openly to the left of Blair. It was he who observed recently that the Kinnockites - those who served their political apprenticeship under Neil Kinnock - are in control. He has since argued that he was not making an especially mischievous observation, as Kinnockites and Blairites are more or less the same political species. He has a point. The new Health Secretary, John Reid, served as a loyal lieutenant to Kinnock in the 1980s, and he is now a passionate Blairite. The Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, who ran Kinnock's office for nine wearying years, is fighting the Prime Minister's corner over some controversial policies, and in the case of top-up fees for universities the most controversial of the lot. Even when Patricia Hewitt - another minister from the Kinnock generation - dared to say that the Government was in danger of being too technocratic and managerialist, Blair popped up to say that he agreed with her. The Kinnockites are Blairites. Or is it the other way around?

Far too much can be made of these short-hand terms. What does it mean to be a Blairite? In 1997 ardent Blairites were pluralists who wanted a new relationship with the Liberal Democrats, believed public services could be reformed largely by reforms from the centre and without a significant increase in public spending. Now they regard the Liberal Democrats with disdain, hail the large increases in public spending and argue for local flexibility in public services. Blairites are those who follow what their leader happens to believe at any given time.

There was a time in the mid- to late 1990s when Robin Cook felt he could claim - counter-intuitively - to be the authentic Blairite. He was a passionate pluralist, a supporter of electoral reform and had close relations with the Liberal Democrats. Later he discovered that Blair himself was not a Blairite in these matters. More recently, Milburn thought he was showing his Blairite credentials by arguing that foundation hospitals, with their new borrowing and spending powers, represented a revolution in health care. Belatedly Blair agreed with the Chancellor that the hospitals should have no additional powers in these areas. Milburn was left preaching the Blairite revolution without Blair.

Such fluidity means that the Prime Minister's opponents are as vaguely defined as his closest allies. There is little common ground linking those who opposed the war against Iraq, opponents of foundation hospitals, and the many Labour MPs preparing to vote against top-up fees for universities when Parliament returns in the autumn. Take the cases of Robin Cook and Clare Short, Blair's most prominent dissenters. Cook supports foundation hospitals and wants his leader to call a referendum on the euro in this Parliament. Short voted against foundation hospitals and is opposed to a referendum in this Parliament. Why any of them should oppose the top-up fees is beyond rational explanation. The proposal is one of the most redistributive that the Prime Minister has brought forward.

His unpredictable pragmatism confuses both his dissenters and his followers. The same could not be said of Attlee by the end of his premiership, nor of Margaret Thatcher, who watched doting Thatcherites breed in front of her approving eyes. Blair's broader aims are fairly clear and potentially historic: to revive the public sector and to end Britain's ambiguous relationship with Europe. But his means of achieving them are imprecise and erratic. The small number of Blairites will only breed with a clear and consistent lead from Blair himself.