Britain: Tony Blair seems to relish the prospect of a confrontation with hisopponents, writes Frank Millar, London Editor
Mr Tony Blair carried the fight to his Labour critics yesterday, declaring he was proud to have toppled Saddam Hussein and that he had nothing to apologise for over the war in Iraq.
Seeming almost to relish the prospect of a confrontation with his opponents at the Labour Party conference, the British Prime Minister shrugged off suggestions that he should quit and again slapped down the leadership ambitions of the Chancellor, Gordon Brown.
On the BBC's Breakfast with Frost programme, Mr Blair insisted there never was "a deal" under which he would hand over the reins of power to Mr Brown and again confirmed his intention to seek a third term in office.
Despite polls suggesting all three main parties were now running neck-and-neck, Mr Blair dismissed the possibility of the Liberal Democrats replacing the Conservatives as the official opposition, citing an enduring Tory threat as reason why there would be no retreat this week in face of trade union opposition to his proposed public service reforms.
A flurry of weekend polls and surveys cast dark clouds over Bournemouth, suggesting that 60-plus per cent of the British people no longer trusted Mr Blair; that something approaching half the voters and similar proportions of his own Labour Party members and MPs would like him to resign in the foreseeable future and that while Labour was still on course to win the next election, its margin of advantage would be increased if Mr Brown assumed the leadership.
This was one of many seeming contradictions in the latest polling evidence, which also suggests that voters would trust the Conservatives more than Labour to handle any economic difficulties which might arise and that tax, including council tax, may be over-taking the National Health Service, crime and Iraq at the top of the list of voters' concerns.
It may also be that some Labourites are emboldened to consider the possibility of an "orderly succession" because the polls actually contain devastating news for the Conservative leader Mr Iain Duncan Smith: that it is the Lib Dems who have benefited from Labour's difficulties over the war and the fallout from the Hutton inquiry and that marginally fewer voters think Mr Duncan Smith would make the best prime minister than bestowed that accolade on Mr William Hague before the last election.
In any event, Mr Brown's satisfaction ratings yesterday fuelled the backstage leadership murmurings ahead of last night's Channel 4 screening of The Deal - a drama based on the now infamous 1994 meeting between Mr Blair and Mr Brown at the Granita restaurant in Islington during which Mr Brown reportedly agreed to back Mr Blair for the leadership in return for an assurance that he would inherit the crown sometime during a second Labour term.
The News of the World gave a suitably populist headline to its exclusive ICM poll, branding Mr Blair the "Drop Idol" after findings that 64 per cent no longer trusted him; that 48 per cent thought he should stand down and that 41 per cent of Labour voters thought Mr Brown should replace him.
A YouGov survey of Labour Party members for the Observer also found Mr Brown towering above any potential rival in the party's affections. This survey suggested as many as 57 per cent of Labour members thought Britain and the United States wrong to go to war, with 37 per cent thinking Mr Blair exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam and a further 44 per cent saying he did so, but not deliberately.
The chairman of YouGov, Mr Peter Kellner, said it would be hard to overstate the damage done by the war to Labour's cohesion. Arguments over Iraq, weapons of mass destruction and the death of Dr David Kelly had persuaded many members that "lies and spin are commonplace" in Downing Street and that Mr Blair was no longer "the straight kind of guy" they thought when they elected him nine years ago.
Describing the challenge to Mr Blair if he was to restore his previously unquestioned supremacy over his party, Mr Kellner wrote: "The message to him from the party membership is brutal: you were wrong to go to war in Iraq, many of us no longer trust you, many of your domestic policies are too right wing and we think Gordon Brown is doing a far better job than you are."
The former Health Secretary, Mr Frank Dobson, also captured this mood of simmering resentment and insubordination - albeit with a gross distortion of the reality - when he suggested Mr Blair might have difficulty getting himself nominated for a fresh leadership contest.
"He has never really been loved by the party and I think that is a problem now," Mr Dobson told the GMTV Sunday programme: "We are about as popular as the Tory Party led by Iain Duncan Smith and you can't get much worse than that."
There was no reason to doubt Mr Blair when he told Sir David Frost he would not be watching last night's Channel 4 "entertainment". He used stronger language than before to insist "there was no deal, there's never been a deal" about a Brown succession.
He was also plainly anxious not to encourage newspaper headlines suggesting an intention to emulate Mrs Thatcher by going "on and on and on . . . and on." At the same time, Mr Blair also appeared to warn against any presumption that the succession could be fixed or pre-determined, saying that the British people would ultimately decide who would be prime minister.
Asked what, with the benefit of hindsight, he would change in his approach to or conduct of the Iraq war, Mr Blair told Sir David: "Nothing, I would have done exactly the same."
While accepting that the current "tough mid-term position" would be "a test of my mettle", Mr Blair insisted "you let the polls come and go," adding: "The listening is, of course, a two-way process. You have got to listen and you have got to lead and when you do both, you get it right."