This symbolised for me the long-awaited handover from Blair to Brown. Ten years of Tony Blair as PM and ten years of Gordon Brown as Chancellor, theirs is a legacy shared.
There will of course be changes, in style and personnel. The style will be more sombre, less celebrity. But for all the talk I doubt there will be less spin. Remember as Chancellor Gordon Brown has specialised in the art of pre-announcing and re-announcing recycled cash.
Some well-worn faces will change. There will be few tears shed for John Prescott, apart from parliamentary sketch-writers at the loss of the principal comic turn in the Cabinet. There will be a younger look to the Cabinet, but still a Scottish tone in its voice. Many of the newcomers will have been the political advisers for the past ten years, so I doubt much fresh thinking and radical change will follow.
Tony Blair has been a great communicator. For all his faults he has had presence and historic electoral success for Labour. But the local elections showed that voters in England, Wales and even Scotland have tired of Labour and are looking for real change.
The country is now set to endure two more months of paralysis while Mr Blair says goodbye and Mr Brown says hello to try to energise Labour diehards to get excited about his eventual arrival at Number 10.
I think this is a conversation largely within the family of the Labour party. The rest of the country has already moved on.
