THE country is moving into a strange six-week limbo period with neither Tony Blair nor Gordon Brown truly at the helm.

It is disappointing that Mr Brown has not had to face a leadership election as he will assume power without having his ideas and policies tested by the cut-and-thrust of political debate. Indeed, while he has made many interesting noises about schools, devolution, constitutional reform and apprenticeships, no one yet knows the manifesto by which he intends to govern Britain. And so no one yet knows the grounds on which the electorate should judge him when he is called to defend his record at the ballot box in a couple of years' time.

Whether this limbo is as ludicrous as the Tory leader David Cameron suggests is debatable. He is right in that government will now drift without one dominant hand on the tiller.

But had Mr Blair announced in Trimdon a departure timetable that included a swift handover to his successor, he would have been accused of denying democracy its rightful place. Instead, he allowed for an election that will not now take place because there is no one within the Labour Parliamentary Party with enough support to take on Mr Brown.

Mr Brown must use this limbo period positively. He must use it to reflect on the successes and failures of the Blair years, and work out how he is to move the Government on. He needs to formulate a clear manifesto, to come up with well-defined policy proposals that will enable him to seize the tiller with both hands on June 27 and set the country on a new and definite course.

And while all of his noises about domestic matters are of interest, the announcement that is most awaited is his new agenda for Iraq. It dominated Mr Blair's last years for the wrong reasons; it must dominate Mr Brown's first months as he plots a new path to extricate British soldiers and Iraqi people from Mr Blair's unhappy bequest.