London Briefing/Chris Johns: Apparently, Tony Blair and Britain's largest trade unions reached an accord in July that promised action on 56 items ranging from employment rights to pensions.

The agreement promised a guaranteed four weeks of holidays to all workers and a minimum of eight bank holidays. I must have been off on the day this was announced.

Like many people, I have been taken aback by the posturing of union leaders at this week's Trade Union Congress (TUC) annual conference, with dark threats being muttered about the implications of any rowing back from the agreed "radical forward-looking agenda".

It may have been foolish, but I thought these cosy deals were a feature of bad old days that would never return.

Britain's trade unions had their heyday in the 1970s when they dominated the public sector and when manufacturing industry was still a large part of the UK economy. Britain is now largely service-based, so union activity is mostly confined to the public sector.

Which is why, I suppose, Blair is trying to be nice to them. Even the prime minister must realise that he went about improving the delivery of public services in precisely the wrong way. First, he threw money at the problem and then asked for changes in working practices.

Predictably, public sector unions have taken the money on offer up front and have reacted in horror to any suggestion that they give something back in return.

If the TUC conference was an unwelcome blast from the past, the latest instalment in the never-ending feud between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown was even more underwhelming. Like the unions, the chancellor is reported to be furious about the return of Alan Milburn to the Cabinet. The TUC sees Milburn as a "moderniser", a dirty word that smacks of change.

Milburn will write the election manifesto but the significance of his return is that it is said to mark Blair's determination to soldier on into a third term, reneging on yet another deal to hand over power to Brown.

A recent twist to the Blair-Brown saga is contained in the memoirs of a former Downing Street economic adviser, Derek Scott, where it is alleged that one of the many reasons why the prime minister allows his chancellor so much leeway is that Blair is simply hopeless at economics.

Whatever the truth of this story, it provides a much-needed explanation for Blair's ongoing tolerance of his plotting and scheming neighbour. Many of Blair's friends have suggested that he should have ditched Brown a long time ago.

Nobody is quite sure how he has done it, but Brown has succeeded in creating an image of himself that puts him firmly on the left of the party, a friend of the trade unions and a believer in more aggressive income redistribution. His constant tinkering with the British economy also invites unflattering comparisons with Claudio Ranieri.

At heart, Brown remains a control freak, which is why he is capable of upsetting just about everybody. For example, EU proposals to give British unions veto powers over the UK's opt-out of the 48-hour working week will be bitterly resisted by the chancellor, even though this will upset his TUC chums.

The Blair-Brown saga fails to move most ordinary voters in the way that it absorbs Whitehall and Fleet Street. But the soap operatics of British politics reveals a depressing retreat from debate about policies, a victory of form over substance.

The irony of the furore over the decision to hand the job of writing Labour's election manifesto to Milburn is that nobody will ever know what that document will contain; nobody will ever read it. The author is more important than the script.

Brown has an undeserved reputation as a brilliant chancellor. The truth is that he made one good decision - handing over monetary policy to the Bank of England - and got lucky. That he is an old-fashioned tax-and-spend Labour chancellor has been obscured by the excellent performance of the UK economy. A strong economy has been down to external factors, Thatcher's prior reforms and superb monetary policy.

If Blair understood a little economics he would not be so afraid of Brown. And the UK would have better public services and lower taxes.