Blair's Message is Lost in the Modern Media Scrummage

It's an odd dislocation. The problem for the great communicator, five years on, is communication. Does he do too much of it, always there with a pledge on universal health or docking child benefits to combat crime - plus that achingly winsome grin? Or are the newspaper headlines and 15-second videobites really no use at all, the antithesis of understanding?

Thus we get both too much and too little of Tony Blair. He wears out himself and his welcome, but he can never get us to stop and listen for more than a moment. He appears as the master of perpetual spin, but his exasperation with that label is real enough. There must, he sometimes emotes, be a better way.

Here, perhaps, it comes. So he's going to submit himself to six hours of grilling a year by select committee chairmen. Out of the Dunwoodys and into the trees. So that's good news for parliament, its self-esteem and backbenchers in search of a little limelight. President Tony descends from the mountain. Westminster beams happily: political correspondents join in the applause. Yet the problem with life - which is also the problem with words such as "spin" - is that the same decision can be cut and served in any number of different ways. And if you're taking decisions, the more ways they work for you the better.

Take plan B. Are the media dumbing down? Has TV - like audiences under the age of 40 - lost interest in politics? Then try something fresh. Henceforth, for two major sessions a year, the prime minister of the day will put himself on the line, answering questions from expert friends and expert foes with something to gain from doing well. This isn't our Tone with Richard and Judy, nor even one of those stock jousts with Frostie or an available Dimbleby. This is heavy-duty stuff which broadcasters - wake up, Greg! - will need to carry whole and uncut. No digital dilemmas, there. It's what your licence fee is all about.

Thus what bestows greater lustre on parliament also takes more of it away. Thus what builds select reputations also diminishes still further the Chamber of the Deserted. Thus a written press which hugs its parliamentary privileges as tight as any MP gets pushed another half a yard towards the peripheries. And (to repeat) it's a good idea not because it accomplishes this second tier of shifts, but because plan A and plan B sit together.

Can he do it, bring it off to electoral advantage? What we may call plan C. Probably. Blair is good with audiences which haven't been hand-picked by the BBC, and impressive across the policy board. He'll cope as well as anyone you can think of - and that, in turn, makes comparisons natural.

Will six hours of Blair be better than six of Brown? (Surely Gordon will have to clamber on the grill himself soon). Could George Bush, imperial wizard of western civilisation, survive in such circumstances? He'd probably rather try to overthrow Saddam single-handed. Could the man they call IDS - because they still can't remember how to spell his name properly - cope without swallowing a kilo of throat lozenges? Would Jacques Chirac claim presidential immunity at even the thought of such stretching interrogation?

B ut let's not get carried away _ for there is an issue here, a real issue that needs opening up and dusting down. Simply: how much communication equals exhaustion?

Downing Street is fond of citing the number of media calls which flood in on it every day - and increase exponentially with every new globalised television station. We need to be serious about that (or, at least, to acknowledge it). It is a huge burden which didn't exist 30 years ago to anything like the same degree; and it does sometimes swamp rational thought. Should we be tenderly sorry? Maybe not. But we ought, at least, to think what it means for prime ministers. We ought, at least, to focus on an increasingly impossible job.

To peep at Blair's week in his diary is to see a grindstone and a treadmill at war. It's hellish not just in the number of functions, but in the number of public assignations - from question time on - where a word out of place means that either you, or the cops, have lost street crime "control". Count the appearances in the house. Count the European summits. Count the flights to fly the flag or construct a coalition. We may all sniff and say this or that isn't "necessary" - but we won't agree for a second on what's unnecessary. Now here's six hours more selected stress and preparation time extra.

Time to pause and (rare for busy men rushing to the airport) think. The standard view is that Mr Blair should do less and let ministers do more. But that's what ministers habitually say until they find that Downing Street's authority is vital to give Irish peace a shove or bang Blunkett's and Brown's heads together. They never need help until they need it - in a world where a visit from Jack Straw shivers no timbers and even Colin Powell can't demand Middle East hush and it's either the top guy or no one.

Meanwhile the top guy is chained to a domestic mast too. He's got Stephen Byers to worry about. He's also got a civil service notably less effective than it used to be because notably less talented and geared to decision-making. He hasn't "seized power" but had it thrust upon him. Nor is that power remotely "presidential". Ask dozy Jacques or snoozy George. The grisly fact is that Blair, like Major before him, has to cope with many jobs rolled into one.

No tears, of course; modest sympathy. He had to volunteer in the first place. But understanding helps - which means we're back to communication.

There, when I watched the Budget the other day, was my old chum Sir Alan Haselhurst, Mr Deputy Speaker, climbing into the chair by tradition - just as, 45 years before, he'd occasionally climbed into the chair at the Oxford Union. Order, order _ is that communication? Is that turning the young generation on, tackling the BNP down the mean streets of Oldham? Gordon, by selfsame tradition, gets his hour uninterrupted. The PM has no such chance. He always has to battle his way through the howls and cheers and pointy heads of order.

No wonder he gets steamed up over trivial things (like who said what to Black Rod about the Queen Mum's lying in state). No wonder some of the press is feeling the heat. But let's pause, rationally, and ask the bigger question. When - through the undergrowth of agendas and lobby-infested creepers and celebrity animal traps - does the prime minister get a decent chance to speak out in the open? And we get the chance to listen?

p.preston@guardian.co.uk