Lurching from leader to pleader

The sheer speed at which Tony Blair's premiership has disintegrated is

breathtaking. It is hard to think of any precedent for it in British

political history.

Two weeks ago, he was, if not riding high, at least with

his authority still largely intact. Now he has gone from leader to pleader,

begging for understanding from the public, his Cabinet colleagues and Labour

backbenchers.

Any one of his problems - Iraq, the 52 protesting former diplomats, his

support for President Bush on Israel, his referendum U-turn, his failure to

warn his colleagues about it, plus the panic-driven speech on immigration -

might have been surmounted on its own. Each is a formidable difficulty;

together, they add up to disaster.

Added to this has been another recent and even swifter U-turn. He was

planning to 'go on and on' - to serve a full three terms, came the signal

from Downing Street. Well, not really, came another hasty signal, perhaps

when Blair realised how this might stir those in the camp of Chancellor

Gordon Brown.

No, the Prime Minister merely wanted to indicate that he was not in a

resigning mood. He did not want to be seen as a lame-duck leader, you see.

Here, then, is a Prime Minister once renowned for his sureness of touch now

lurching from one clumsy expedient to another - from spinning to falling flat

on his face.

Nor do things promise to get any better. Iraq festers.

Yet Blair went out of his way in the Commons to defend the Americans'

brutal, heavy-handedness in Fallujah. It is all too plain that by throwing in

his lot with President Bush so completely he has a tiger by the tail.

And on immigration, he has moved too late. Tomorrow's formal entry of new

members into the EU threatens to have the issue jostling for first place in

the public's many concerns.

So what happens now? The most formidable problem remains Iraq.

The Americans are facing the possibility of defeat in Fallujah.

The wonder is that they ever thought that street fighting to take the city

was realistic in military terms or that, in political terms, it could do

anything but stir up more violence across the country - and, indeed, in the

Muslim world.

The Americans are now dispatching more armour to Iraq, still steeped in the

delusion that lack of military might is the big problem (shades of Vietnam).

They would also like Britain to send more troops.

If Blair succumbs to that - any decision is said to be 'weeks away' - he

will unleash a storm inside and outside Parliament. Even the Tory front

bench, pliant in its support for the Iraq venture, would start making

difficulties.

Meanwhile, Gordon Brown and his supporters hover in the wings - but oh, so

quietly! In fact, they do not need to do anything else.

The Blair premiership is in such crisis that it can be left to fall apart

on its own.

On Iraq, Blair has always been able to count on pretty solid support from

the Tory leadership. Despite the tissue of lies with which the invasion was

launched, despite the non-existence of weapons of mass destruction, despite

everything in Iraq turning out disastrously, the Conservative official line

remains that it was the right thing to do.

This takes some explaining. As advanced by Shadow Foreign Secretary Michael

Ancram, the argument runs as follows: Saddam was just like Hitler. We had to

stop him and not repeat the ' appeasement' errors of the Thirties.

But, of course, Hitler was a threat to us. Saddam was not. Hitler headed a

nation which had lost territory and was hungry for revenge and made few

secrets of his ambitions.

Saddam's regime was not only not a threat to us, but it was also opposed to

the Muslim fundamentalists who are so grave a threat.

Hitler breached Germany's treaties with the victorious powers almost from

his moment of election.

This Tory argument is such bilge that one can only remark that, like a

little learning, a little history can be a dangerous thing.

Mention of Hitler brings us to the curious episode of Daily Express

proprietor Richard Desmond and his reprise of John Cleese's imitation of

Hitler before shocked executives of the Daily Telegraph, which is facing the

possibility of a German takeover.

To read the extensive Press reports and comments, you would think this was a

momentous as well as a deeply shocking event.

Whether you regard the matter as involving a rather cruel and crude joke, or

simply silly, must be a matter of taste.

But it raises the question of whether we have lost our sense of humour and

our sense of proportion. There was once a time when such an event - occupying

in the Press the space normally allotted to a foreign crisis - would have

provoked trifling coverage and virtually no comment.

Being free to scoff and jeer is an essential freedom, one rather more

important, in fact, than many of the 'human rights' so laboured in

progressive circles.

Perhaps we shall soon have a British Board of Mirth Control to set standards

for permissible humour. Never assume such a nonsense is impossible.