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Tony Blair is running out of true believers

Jackie Ashley— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

— PHOTO: AP

Tony Blair ... few backers for his policies.

AT BRITAIN'S Houses of Parliament, there are days of great human drama; and there are dramatic days that actually matter — that shape politics for months or years to come. Wednesday's rain-streaked drama was both, together. The fall of David Blunkett was a terrible moment for an often fallible, occasionally brilliant man. Its details will be remembered by him, and by tweedy historians, and by no one else. Put it alongside what happened in the House of Commons, however, and a bigger story is revealed.

For, just as Mr. Blunkett was assessing the immediate reaction to his rather dignified resignation statement, MPs were tearing holes in the Home Office's flagship bill on terrorism. After the Government scraped through by a single vote on a clause outlawing the glorification of terrorism, Home Secretary Charles Clarke realised that his key proposal — to hold terror suspects for up to 90 days without charge — faced defeat. Mr. Clarke screeched to a compromise, offering urgent talks to find a consensus, an extraordinarily embarrassing climbdown on such a major Bill.

Mr. Blunkett's resignation and the Government climbdown are not logically linked. One was caused by a silly and perhaps arrogant error by a Minister already under huge pressure, the other by widespread unease about terrorism and traditional liberties. But they are politically linked. Mr. Blunkett was one of the last heavy hitters Tony Blair could deploy to push through his radical, even illiberal, agenda. And the vote in the Commons showed that Mr. Blair is flailing already.

Let us stand back and look at the wider political situation. The anti-terror legislation is in real trouble in the Commons — and just wait until it hits the House of Lords. No. 10 (Downing Street) cannot get its way inside the Home Office, despite insinuating, relentless briefings against Mr. Clarke. On education reform, Mr. Blair and his advisers had to arm-wrestle Education Secretary Ruth Kelly towards last week's white paper, which went down among Labour MPs like the proverbial lead balloon. Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt has had a horrible time from her own Labour backbenchers on the key issue of primary care (health) trusts and their role as providers of health care to communities.

Move on invalidity benefit

As important as any of these crises are the proposals to curb invalidity benefit. It seems that on this Mr. Blunkett too was fighting Mr. Blair, though some colleagues see the reported tension as a failed last-minute diversion from his personal problems. Across the board, the radical pro-market reform agenda is in trouble. What seemed brave in the spring sunlight is getting mightily bogged down in the autumn mud. Once, when a Minister such as Mr. Blunkett was in a spot of bother, we would have seen Minister after Minister rush to the microphones to help him out. He was a key valued colleague of Mr. Blair. That used to be enough. But times have changed. The Prime Minister finds it harder to rustle up true believers.

Ministers looking ahead to their own futures no longer want to die on the barbed wire pushing ultra-Blairite policies.

So what does it all add up to? Not the day Mr. Blair fell from power, or finally gave up. The Prime Minister is a resilient character and determined to make his mark in his third term. The rest of us, however, are watching an administration in which every day the Prime Minister has fewer genuinely close allies in the Cabinet, and fewer MPs prepared to nod through bills they cannot quite agree with.

Frankly, Labour people are less frightened of him. Labour MPs do not worry that opposing him will damage the leader's authority and therefore lose them their seats because, come the next election, he won't be there anyway. The process is constant seepage of Mr. Blair's authority.

What can be done? Not much. It was all predictable — and predicted — when Mr. Blair first announced that he would not stand as leader in a fourth election, something those tweedy historians may well decide was the worst tactical mistake of his political life. Mr. Blunkett himself has seemed a little out of control ever since the story of his affair with the publisher Kimberley Quinn broke and, at a human level, everyone can understand that. Once one thing goes wrong, other things follow.

Now the Prime Minister is running out of Ministers with real clout and experience who are prepared to back him. That has a knock-on effect in the Commons. On Wednesday, there was a final "time's up" tap on Mr. Blunkett's window. There is a growing sense at Westminster that he won't be the last.

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