Quotes of the Day

One limo, two journeys. politics throws up all sorts of questions: about competing needs and interests, about motives and results, even about the sanity of its practitioners. But Tony Blair's handover of the British premiership to Gordon Brown, a transition long anticipated and heavily choreographed, unexpectedly raised the one kind of question that never finds its way onto a parliamentary order paper: a metaphysical poser. How can power — granted by voters, defined by laws, enjoyed and exercised for 10 years — slip away so easily, almost as if it had never existed? The question hovered above a grizzled Prime Minister Blair as he faced Members of Parliament one last time and accompanied a rejuvenated Prime Minister Brown as he first entered 10 Downing Street as its master. But its most visible expression was the limousine, an armor-plated Jaguar reserved for Britain's Premier, that carried Blair to Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation to the Queen, then waited to collect Brown after he accepted Her Majesty's request to form a new government. Blair left the palace a private man in a regular car, gearing up for the uncertainties of his new assignment as a peacemaker in the Middle East. Sic transit gloria mundi.

He once seemed invulnerable. His protracted rivalry with his eventual successor sapped his strength, but what finally did for him was his determination to stand shoulder to shoulder with the U.S., even when this meant committing troops to a war that many in his party and country deplored. "I think Iraq will turn out to be a positive legacy for us both," President Bush told a British newspaper. The President also confessed he'd tried to persuade Blair to stay until his White House term expired. Peter Brierley, waiting in Downing Street to witness Blair's departure, was sad to see him go too. Brierley's soldier son was killed in Iraq in 2003. "I wanted Blair to stay until we got him into court," said Brierley, cradling a picture of his smooth-faced boy.

The grieving father kept his vigil as Brown arrived in triumph in Downing Street and promised "new priorities." The weeks leading up to this moment had witnessed a resurgence in Labour's popularity. Britons seem willing to let Brown take his turn at the top. Yet the measure of Brown's success will not just be how long he retains power. It will be the manner in which he comes to relinquish it.

• CATHERINE MAYER
• As Tony Blair leaves office, Gordon Brown gets a taste of power