IN a hundred years' time, when New Labour is so old it will have grown whiskers, no-one will remember a single Tony Blair soundbite.

So a tip to the spin doctors: identify the Prime Minister with a fashion accessory - lots to choose from in the trendy new party - to assure his political immortality. Nothing as twee as John Major's Y-fronts or as

striking as Margaret Thatcher's handbag, but a solidly enduring symbol of British quality and craftsmanship . . . like the Gladstone Bag.

You almost certainly didn't realise that, in political terms, Labour's celebrations are overshadowed this month by

a political giant - William

Ewart Gladstone.

He died 100 years ago on May 19 - but after a parliamentary career spanning more than 50 years, and with four premierships, it's the bag he's remembered for (and we're not talking of fallen ladies he paid nocturnal visits to - in a ministering capacity, of course).

It's ironic, nevertheless, that WEG remains a ladies man . . . as the jeunesse doree complement their glad rags with the Glad-bag. At #149, half the price of a Milan lookalike, the eponymous appendage is at once chic and businesslike for the upwardly mobile who like bags of style.

Lovingly cared-for old ones - often with a previous owner's initials embossed on wrinkled leather - are not hard to find. But they often need re-lining (expensive) and you never know what nefarious use they may have been put to (JR might stand for Jack the Ripper, who always transported his surgical instruments in one, according to the best Hammer horrors).

So it's reassuring that the Gladstone tradition has survived, with a range of superbly crafted bags still being made by portmanteaux specialists AD Mackenzie and Co, whose workshops are on the Isle of Arran. Larger versions - up to #365 - on show at their Victoria Street shop in Edinburgh, are a reminder that the original bag was not just the ''Gladstonette'' we are most familiar with today.

In its more commodious form it would have been recognised by Gladstone, who may have used it as a nineteenth-century holdall for conveying Cabinet papers and weekend washing north. Charles Kennedy, MP for Ross, Cromarty and Skye, tells how his illustrious forebear set to and scrubbed his smalls once he had thundered out of London in a steam train, preferring a drying blast of heather-fresh country air to a soot-laden pea-souper!

The Gladstone in its various formats was succeeded by the modern suitcase.

But its distinctive looks and hinged practicality make it an outstanding choice for the discerning traveller of the late twentieth century, who will easily distinguish it from louder luggage on the airport carousel.

It is fitting the Gladstone tradition should be alive and well in Scotland as we prepare to celebrate the Grand Old Man's centenary (he died on Ascension Day, 1898).

For it was from the port of Leith that the family embarked on a journey to power and

prosperity in Liverpool - little realising fame and fortune were in the bag.