As a Silly Season exercise, let us imagine what might have been had the Labour Party chosen Gordon Brown instead of Tony Blair as its leader in 1994?

Let’s assume that he had won the election in 1997 with a 40-seat majority — Gordon isn’t the stuff of which landslides are made.

Tony Blair would probably have been given the Foreign Office, allowing him plenty of opportunities to scour the world for freebie holiday venues — and keeping him out of his master’s way.

Would Gordon still be PM in 2008?

If he had put up a straight bat — Geoffrey Boycott style — he would almost certainly have won the 2001 election. The Conservatives were simply not ready for office. Even a man with all the charisma of a sedated walrus could have won that, although probably with a reduced majority — let’s say, 25.

In those days Brown didn’t have the reputation of the Man in the Iron Mask, locked away in the Treasury for 10 years in a long sulk matched only by Edward Heath’s — a fellow traveller with similar psychological characteristics.

And we wouldn’t remember him going from Batman to bit-part player in 12 months either. He would have had the benefit of the doubt, not to mention the unusually benign economic conditions of the past decade.

Dour Gordon might just have hung on in there for two Parliaments on gravitas and “the economy stupid”. But what about the third general election, in 2005?

I don’t believe Brown would have risked the Iraq war, as Blair did just to stay onside with the American President. His ratings wouldn’t have flatlined overnight in the way his predecessor’s did. Somehow Gordon would have kept his head doggedly above water and achieved a reasonable result against Michael Howard in “the dullest general election in British Parliamentary history”. Let’s give him a majority of 6.

So here we are, back almost in the present day with Gordon Brown still in power and Blair long since gone to the lures of Political Big Brother and other c-list game shows.

David Cameron now comes on the scene and challenges the old walrus. “I am the heir to Brown,” he declares while arriving at the House of Commons in a sledge drawn by huskies. “Vote Blue, ditch Brown” he yells across the dispatch box.

It’s now 2008, with the economy falling apart from the American sub-prime crisis and a hapless Geoffrey Robinson, Chancellor for eight years, getting all the blame for Britain “not fixing the roof when the sun was shining.” He resigns and is quickly replaced by Brown’s closest ally, Alistair Darling.

The Prime Minister is a mere five points behind in the opinion polls with everything to play for. True to form he hangs on until early 2009 — just before the full force of the recession bites.

Gordon will never be a national treasure. He may be a Treasury type, but never a treasure. Nevertheless, the public admires his quiet persistence over a decade in its service and goes to the polls in two minds about him and the young Etonian pretender, David Cameron.

It’s a hung Parliament. Brown invites Nick Clegg, the new Liberal Democrat leader into a Lib-Lab pact and he accepts, eager for office.

Cameron prepares for more years in opposition, secretly believing he will never win against the formidable Brown.

“How I wish Blair had won the Labour leadership back in 1994,” he confides to wife, Samantha. “He would never have won a single election. They would have seen through him right from the start.”