Britain's Conservative Party may finally have found itself a lucky leader, writes Frank Millar in London.
Is Michael Howard going to prove a lucky politician? Politicos of all persuasions - even those not normally in the least superstitious - recognise the type, and the importance of that commodity to any successful leadership. True, some have or develop the capacity to make their own good fortune. Nor is luck ever enough on its own.
Margaret Thatcher was lucky insofar as the Labour government's so-called Winter of Discontent paved the way for her revolution in the autumn of 1979. Labour then went from bad to worse, penning a 1983 manifesto, dubbed the longest suicide note in history, under Michael Foot's leadership.
Yet the Iron Maiden also faced personal difficulties and political challenges - the Westland affair, the miners' strike, the battle to reclaim the Falklands - which might easily have overwhelmed a less formidable and resolute prime minister.
Some think of John Major as an unlucky leader, although his critics in the Tory party will insist the disaster of Britain's expulsion from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism was self-inflicted. Few could accuse William Hague of ever being lucky, having acquired the leadership too soon and at a point when the British public simply didn't want to know. As for Iain Duncan Smith, even he may in time come to think that his luck only turned when his parliamentary colleagues finally decided to bring his unhappy leadership to an end.
Which brings us back to Mr Howard. Nothing in the Conservative experience since 1990 and the fall of Mrs Thatcher could have led him to imagine Mr Duncan Smith's end two weeks ago could have resulted in a bloodless coup and his own uncontested succession.
Such a sudden outbreak of Conservative common sense and unity of purpose is inevitably somewhat suspect, and certainly fragile. Yet it has been remarkable to observe; as has been the reaction of the Labour government. For never in his wildest imaginings could Mr Howard have anticipated that the moment of his coronation would coincide with the public renewal of a potentially ruinous power struggle between Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown.
And Mr Howard's lucky run continued last night when he persuaded former chancellor Kenneth Clarke to join his three immediate predecessors as leader - Mr Major, Mr Hague and Mr Duncan Smith - on a Conservative Advisory Council.
Mr Clarke is just too big a "beast" to want to return to the opposition front-line shadowing one of the major departments he actually ran in government.
However, the inclusion of the man considered by many "the best leader the Tories never had" signals a readiness to trust Mr Howard's promise to lead from his party's centre. Crucially it also gives weight to Mr Clarke's promise last week that he and Mr Howard will not be spending their time to the next election fighting over British membership of the euro or the proposed new EU constitution.
Likewise Mr Howard has shown himself astute in asking the former leaders to join his "team". Outsiders might think it elementary that they would indeed put themselves at the service of their party. However, that has hardly been the Tory way since Mrs Thatcher's shock-win in 1975 sent Ted (now Sir Edward) Heath into "the longest sulk" in political history. Howard's way is certainly looking very different.
The decision to cut the shadow cabinet by half is clearly intended to give the party's decision-making core greater flexibility in challenging the government, and to give Mr Howard's leading lights a much greater media profile. Similarly the appointment of Mr Liam Fox and Lord Saatchi as co-chairmen of the party suggests a newly-ruthless approach to reorganising a rusting party machine once famed for the brilliant Saatchi advertising campaign "Labour isn't working", which accompanied Mrs Thatcher's march to triumph back in 1979. Mr Howard's appointment of Mr Stephen Sherbourne as his chief-of-staff - he once served as Mrs Thatcher's political secretary - has likewise been welcomed by party insiders as evidence of a return to gravitas and grown-up politics following an unhappy period under IDS and his former chairman Theresa May.
There is some gravitas, too, on the front bench.
Michael Ancram remains deputy leader and foreign affairs spokesman, while the highly intelligent and thoughtful - if sometimes gaffe-prone - Oliver Letwin becomes shadow chancellor. For David Davis, who led the way in calling on the party to unite around the candidacy of Mr Howard, there is a promotion to Shadow Secretary of State for Home, Constitutional and Legal Affairs and the opportunity, in shadowing populist Home Secretary David Blunkett, to establish his own future leadership credentials.
For the Tory "modernisers" now adjusting to life without Michael Portillo in a putative leadership role, there is the reassurance of seeing their most prominent member in the shadow cabinet, Tim Yeo, given the combined responsibility for Health and Education, seemingly reinforcing Mr Howard's promise that future tax cuts will not be at the expense of Britain's public services.
All in all, then, a good start for Mr Howard; a truly conservative sense of continuity and change; a coming-together of the available talents; and a sense that the Conservative Party really has rediscovered its interest in the pursuit of power.
They are of course, as Mr Howard has warned, still only in the foothills of their ascent. It is unimaginable, still, that the Conservatives can achieve the swing necessary to expel Labour from power at the next election. However, some Tories are already allowing themselves to think this need not mean a Labour majority for a full third term. Mr Howard will be hoping his luck holds a while longer and that an increasingly dysfunctional Blair/Brown relationship will help him further on his way.