By Andrew Marr BBC Political Editor

The Cabinet is no longer the real decision-making hub

In Cabinet, who counts?

The last couple of weeks have thrown up fascinating insights into the Blair way of doing business which political historians are going to pore over in years to come.

We had the U-turn on the referendum, which took a surprising number of senior ministers completely by surprise.

We've had Cabinet ministers such as Jack Straw exercising more decisive influence than outsiders expected.

We've had an embarrassingly semi-public spat about the timing and usefulness of ID cards, despite Tony Blair's support for the idea.

We've had three ex-Cabinet ministers warning current Cabinet ministers to make the case more strongly on Europe - Peter Mandelson, Stephen Byers and Alan Millburn had the chancellor and foreign secretary in mind.

Cosy chats

All in all, signs of jumpy liveliness in the Cabinet when we'd been told Cabinet government was, if not actually dead, in a motionless coma.

In fact the Cabinet does matter - arguably as much as it did in the Wilson or Callaghan years - but in a completely different way.

There are interesting collective discussions, particularly in the irregular political cabinets.

These can be frank and tart disagreements take place, though not over the most sensitive issues, such as Iraq.

But the Cabinet, meeting formally, is certainly not the hub of real decision-making...

Tony Blair's failure to discuss the referendum with it until after his public announcement was cock-up not conspiracy but it was telling too.

And as we come nearer to an election, the number of experienced officials at the centre of real power is shrinking as well.

Hurried decisions

Think of the American sitcom Friends rather than Yes, Minister - it's a government conducted between small groups on sofas and easy chairs, mobiles stuck under their chins, in which personal loyalty counts more than formal hierarchy.

People like Byers and Millburn, in and out of Downing Street all the time, often know more about the prime minister's real thinking than senior Cabinet ministers wrestling with large departments and legislative timetables.

On the referendum and ID cards, ring-arounds and small huddles over coffee were vastly more important than formal meetings.

As we've seen it has dangers - experienced people left out in the cold, hurried decisions, a conspiratorial nerviness about who knew what, when, and who Tony's really talking too.

But for better or worse, this is now unalterably the Blair style.

Friends-style politics? Perhaps not the happiest analogy for a leader at the top for a decade - Friends has been fantastically popular for 10 years too - and it finishes next week.