It has not been a great week for New Labour - nor for its brand product "New Britain" or its much vaunted "New politics". Mr Blair's government puts much store by style. So we find ourselves fretting about important questions such as, for example, the message implicit in the apparent conflict between the Prime Minister's dress code and that of his Chancellor.
When Mr Brown went to his first big City bash after the election our attention was drawn to the fact that he would not be appearing in traditional black tie. The preferred lounge suit was obviously meant to make more than a fashion statement. Yet Mr Blair went to the Lord Mayor's banquet on Monday night resplendent in white tie.
What were we to make of it? Something? Nothing? Who knows? Many, certainly, didn't know quite what to make of that style-summit laid on for the French President and Prime Minister at Canary Wharf last Friday.
"Cool Brittannia" is the Mandelsonian theme we will doubtless see repeated during Britain's showcase EU presidency next year. Nothing wrong with taking diplomacy away from the fusty rooms and corridors of Whitehall, to be sure. Nothing wrong either with promoting the work of British artists and designers. Yet, it's hard to think of Sir Terence Conran's sofas and lace-up chairs as an enduring statement of Britain as a "young" country - whatever that might mean.
And it's certainly hard to accept that there is anything particularly "new" about any of it. Sure, Oasis feature in the guest-lists for Tony and Cherie's celebrity parties at Number 10. But some of us are old enough to remember Harold Wilson hob-nobbing with the Beatles. And, as Tony Benn reminds us, he used the Post Office Tower in the sixties as a symbol of "modernisation".
The veteran left-winger is happy to sniff at the New Labour government's pretensions. "New," he says, "is the oldest word in the political language." Again, perfectly right to recruit a successful chef to let the French visitors sample something of "new" British cooking. But you begin to feel a bit queasy at reports that they tried to persuade Anton to change his name to Tony for the day.
Maybe Blair himself senses that the modernising spin doctors are getting a bit carried away. At the Mansion House on Monday night he was anxious his audience should not misunderstand his emphasis on modernity. He wanted to build a future "using the strengths of our history". He valued and honoured Britain's history enormously. How, he asked, could anyone have stood at the Cenotaph the previous day "and not feel both moved and proud"?
Traditionalists may have been reassured by that - and by the discovery that Blair was moved and angry at the discovery that a distinctly tattered Union Jack had graced the Ministry of Defence building as Queen Elizabeth led the nation in mourning the dead of two world wars. A prompt apology from the Defence Secretary nipped in the bud any tabloid ridicule. Some recalled the dreadful time Michael Portillo had over a boisterous drinks party he hosted at the MoD during the Trooping of the Colour.
However, despite a by-now quite impressive list of damaging episodes and policy U-turns, people are still willing this government to succeed. And where it does get itself into difficulty it has been helped by its candid and up-front manner.
At any rate, until this week.
The Formula One affair has undoubtedly spelt Blair's biggest difficulty and embarrassment since taking office. Six months into power found a Labour-supporting newspaper yesterday lamenting "the unedifying spectacle of Labour squirming to avoid telling the people it affects to serve the truth about its own sources of funding."
Certainly it appears that the decision to come clean only followed Bernie Ecclestone's admission that he had given the party a donation of £1 million last January. The Formula One chief insists he did so because - like many other previous Tory supporters - he had been impressed by Blair's vision for the country. He had made the donation, moreover, before anybody started talking about tobacco advertising in sport.
The unhappy fact remains that Ecclestone secured a private meeting with Blair after which the Prime Minister unilaterally reversed party policy - exempting Formula One from the proposed advertising ban, and leaving his wrongly-maligned Health Minister to defend it.
In a particularly wounding comment, the Guardian ventured: "Mr Blair's decision looks uncannily like Cash for U-turns." That is unlikely to stick. Blair is manifestly not "sleazy". There are no grounds for doubting his personal commitment to cleaning up British politics. And as his party contemplates staff redundancies in order to repay Ecclestone's gift, Labour chiefs rightly point to the potential implications of the advice they received on the issue from the new standards watchdog, Sir Patrick Neill.
Blair can ride this storm, leading the way in the consequent debate about state-funding of parties versus regular disclosure of the source and scale of large donations received.
But he has been wounded - less by attempts to land sleaze at his door than by charges that he and his advisers have shown themselves foolish and naive, still unable to grasp the difference between the politics of opposition and the politics of government. New politics requires more than new Labour rhetoric.