The news that Tony Blair – also known as 'the Tonemeister' or simply 'St Tony' – is planning a political comeback has precipitated a lot of chuntering from the usual quarters.

Indeed, the leaden thought that Bremner, Bird and Fortune might make an interminable return to our screens in order that we can hear the same unfunny repetitions on the 'Blair is Bush’s poodle' gag has put the dampeners on the Tony renaissance for even me, and I wear my 'Blairite Zombie' badge with a great deal of pride. Largely for 'crush of shame' reasons, in truth.

Somewhere in a London mansion, Polly Toynbee is being deployed to explain to us how the “failed new Labour project” and the party’s current difficulties are the fault of the former PM. You know, the chap who won three elections on the bounce. Anybody fancy picking the logic peanuts out of that one?

Meanwhile, Ken Livingstone – who bucked a national swing to Labour by losing the London mayoralty to a blond bimbo – has warned Ed Miliband not to return to Blairism. Commenting on Chuka Ummuna’s discussion with the Greens’ Jenny Jones, would-be-working-class warbler Billy Bragg denounced young Chuka as “nasty new Labour.” Bearing in mind that Ummuna was elected in 2010, and has not been in the Parliamentary Labour Party under Brown let alone Blair, it’s difficult to see how Bragg made that assessment. The lad is on the telly so often that I am more familiar with his facial features than those of my own family, and he always appears genial enough to me, but nothing in what he says marks him out as a 'Blairite' or a 'Brownite' or even a 'Milibandite' as far as I can see.

This is because there is, in my opinion, no such thing as Blarism. For the majority of the ten years between 1997 and 2007, people used to use the phrases 'Blairite' and 'Brownite' as a way of expressing which personality cult they preferred, not as a way of identifying policy differences. True, Brown came out against tuition fees initially, and then ordered his supporters to back the proposal at the last minute but this was power positioning, not ideology. Similarly, the most contentious decision of the 2001-05 Parliament was the Iraq war which Brown publicly backed. In terms of 'new Labour' – loosely defined as the principle that Labour might want to win general elections instead of gracefully conceding plucky defeat like a sort of political Tim Henman – there is very little to choose between Blair and Brown. They simply aren’t that different in terms of what they actually believe in, but ended up clashing because of the quest for power, with two cliques lining up behind them.

Blairism and Brownism, therefore, is a manifestation of the internal cold war that raged between its two biggest personalities. The term of abuse du jour is “Blairite zombie” is used by people for whom this still has resonance even two years after both former Labour PMs have shuffled off this political coil. It is as depressing and pointless as the servants of the house of Montague and Capulet biting their thumbs at each other as a way of siding with their masters over a feud that Shakespeare never bothered to explain because it was entirely pointless and totally irrelevant to the actual plot.

However, whilst many who align themselves with one or other of the factions would argue that there are differences that go beyond personality clashes, a more serious threat to Labour – whether Blairite or otherwise – has emerged. The unions have swung to the left due to a combination of circumstance and a new wave of more militant leaders such as Unite’s Len McCluskey. This is a new, tangible, and more serious fault-line than the Blair/Brown fissure which may eventually put veteran Blairite zombies and Don Gordon’s mafia on the same side of a much wider and genuinely ideological debate.