Blair puts his job on the line but his war strategy is working – so far

By Ronan Mullen

Asked whether Ireland should accommodate Saddam Hussein if the Iraqi dictator goes into exile, Rabbitte suggested that this matter would have to be considered, or words to that effect. It was just an off-the-cuff comment, his press officer reassures me. I think he means his leader wouldn't have said it if he was actually thinking at the time.

It's not like Rabbitte to trip up like that, but perhaps it shows how little serious thought he has given to the Iraqi crisis. Nothing else could explain his recent assertion that Ireland should join the "Franco-German peace effort" and that the Government should not 'support or facilitate' unilateral military action against Iraq. Does the Labour Party think that Iraq would have given any co-operation to the weapons inspectors without the threat of direct action by the US?

Thankfully the leader of the British Labour Party has reflected more carefully on the issues and, what's more, seems willing to pay the ultimate political price for what he believes. Already much criticised for his readiness to go to war without a UN mandate, Tony Blair was dealt a serious blow by his Overseas Development Secretary, Clare Short, on Sunday night.

She castigated him for being 'extraordinarily reckless' on Iraq "reckless for the world, reckless for the undermining of the UN is this disorderly world... reckless with his own future position and place in history." That last reference to Blair's 'future position' was especially ominous. Two weeks ago, it seemed surreal to talk of Blair being ousted, even as 121 Labour MPs voted against his Government in a House of Commons vote on Iraq.

But on Sunday night Short put the leadership issue centre-stage, and the unthinkable is now up for discussion. Blair must reckon with the possibility that his own demise as Prime Minister may be a possible outcome of this crisis.

Only time will tell whether Blair's Iraq policy is the longest political suicide note in recent history or whether it's proof of his outstanding foresight and statesmanship. He has certainly mystified both critics and admirers. This, after all, is the leader of a Labour Party whose greatest achievement was to find out what people wanted to hear and then to sell it to them. He built his success on making the Labour Party electable once more, borrowing the most popular policies of the Tory Party and marginalising the shrill principles of Old Labour. His government became synonymous with 'spin,' and his determined henchmen, Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, were especially notorious among journalists for their heavy-handedness in putting across the Labour Party line. With this populist pedigree, Tony Blair seemed hardly the man to risk his premiership on a strategic alliance with a US Republican administration deeply unpopular within the British Labour Party. But Blair's detractors are not slow to explain it away. Some say Blair wants his place in history and dramatic changes in the Middle East are the way to achieve this. Others say that he is the true son of Thatcher and that his interventionist policy shows the British government grasping for a lost empire in the only way possible now that the world is dominated by the US.

Or it could be sheer pragmatism. Immediately after September 11, Blair moved to cement Britain's special relationship with America. And Britain will benefit politically and economically with America in its debt.

But what good is all this to Blair if the war becomes horribly protracted, his party is split and he is ejected from Downing Street? Maybe, to quote one senior Labour MP, the Prime Minister is "betting the farm because he believes he can win," thinking that the war will be prosecuted quickly and successfully and the Allies will find weapons of mass destruction. In that event, certainly, Blair will have silenced his critics.

But there are problems with this analysis. Blair prides himself on his European credentials, yet his unequivocal support for America has split the European consensus, leaving the union utterly confused and divided over its foreign policy. A dark, paralysing shadow has been cast over the Convention on the Future of Europe as a result.

The United Nations is in a similar state of chassis. It was Blair who first urged George Bush to seek UN approval for a possible war on Iraq. But it is Blair, too, who will give the US the legitimacy it needs if it goes to war without the support of the UN.

If this happens, the UN will emerge yet again as a hopelessly divided entity, unable to impose its will on global politics.

Blair's passion and determination in the midst of this political and diplomatic risk suggest another motive for his actions: moral conviction.

"At every stage, we should seek to avoid war," he says, "but if the threat cannot be removed peacefully, please let us not fall for the delusion that it can be safely ignored. If we do not confront these twin menaces of rogue states with weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism, they will not disappear. They will just feed and grow on our weakness." This passion seems to have spread to the normally anodyne Jack Straw, who last Friday addressed a spirited defence of British policy to the French Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, at the UN Security Council Meeting in New York.

Despite their eloquence, Blair and Straw are still unable to convince the strong leftist element within the British Labour Party, and much of the European intelligentsia, that Britain isn't the poodle of a right-wing American administration bent on war. But the view that Blair has somehow permitted the US to threaten war on Iraq rests on the incorrect suggestion that America would not go it alone. In fact, Blair and Straw acted as a brake on American unilateralism by encouraging George Bush to go to the United Nations for support in the first place.

And it was only because Britain could be trusted by the US to join them in a war, if this became necessary, that the US went along with this. Blair's critics also fail to realise that the war strategy has been successful so far. None of the successes which Hans Blix is now reporting would have happened without the military build-up.

Meanwhile, Saddam watches while the United Nations tears itself apart. His strategy is to give the appearance of co-operation at this point, thus putting moral pressure on the UN to oppose an early deadline for disarmament. If he can achieve this, the Allies must contemplate a war in the hot Iraqi summer or later in the autumn. You can then expect him to start dragging his feet again. The oppressive economic sanctions, and Saddam's brutalisation of his own people, will continue.

What many of those who criticise the US and Britain fail to realise is that the best chance for peace lies in putting maximum pressure on Iraq right now. It may even force a last minute flight into exile from Saddam. But without the determination of the US and Britain to go in if disarmament deadlines are not met, the Iraqi dictator will be off the hook again.