BRITAIN:The coming year will see the outplay of the final unhappy and still unfolding chapter of Tony Blair's dominance of British politics. Frank Millarreports from London
Might a rising Celtic tide threaten New Labour Mark II just as Gordon Brown assumes the governance of Tory England? The Scottish National Party is enjoying something of a revival during Alex Salmond's second term as leader.
He certainly thinks the nationalists have every chance of emerging the largest party after the May 3rd elections to the Scottish Parliament. However that would not necessarily presage government and the ability to call a referendum on the issue of Scottish independence.
The operation of four-party-politics in Holyrood makes it difficult for one party to command a workable majority. Conceivably there might be enough Scottish Socialists to help the SNP dislodge the present Lab-Lib Dem administration. However a referendum on the constitutional issue would be of a very different nature, with the other three main parties - Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives - all in favour of the status quo.
That said, the Scots are seemingly not alone now in considering the viability and desirability of the current constitutional settlement in the UK. Opinion polls suggest a growing English disposition to see the Scots go their own way if that is their choice.
Might increasing Cameroonian pressure for "English votes on English laws" perversely see David Cameron's Conservatives force the issue - signalling the eventual break-up of the Union even as DUP leader Ian Paisley thinks to preserve it by forming a Stormont administration with Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness?
Gordon Brown will certainly be hoping Tony Blair finally settles the Northern Ireland question before leaving office in the coming year. We also know the "Iron Chancellor" would be a fervently "unionist" prime minister, happy to support the England football team and thrilled to see the Union flag reclaimed from the British National Party in a display of Labour patriotism across the country he hopes to rule.
Yet however confident Brown may be that he can win over Middle England and repel the nationalist threat in his homeland, he will know these unresolved questions arising from Labour's devolution settlement are not the only "legacy" issues Blair will be unable to resolve before finally, and plainly reluctantly, handing over the keys to 10 Downing Street.
That reluctance has been palpable throughout the final unhappy and still unfolding chapter of his premiership which began with Blair's crazy thought to settle speculation about his future by announcing he would not seek a fourth term.
Now even more a lame duck than an American president in the second half of his second term, Blair justifies his extended stay in office by a quest for a Middle East peace settlement to offset the Iraq war and its disastrous aftermath which most people agree will be his enduring legacy. While wishing it were otherwise, a sceptical Labour Party knows an Israeli/Palestine solution will only be brokered by an American president.
Unrepentant to the last, Blair insists his is a foreign policy tailored to the British national interest. But Britons, like Labour politicians, look to Washington in the hope of an "exit strategy" promising the early return of over-extended British forces. Beyond that they harbour few expectations of the Bush presidency and (the Labourites at least) allow themselves to dream of another Clinton in the White House.
In this respect, of course, they might be as disappointed in President Hilary as in prime minister Brown (assuming John Reid declines to carry the Blairite standard, or fails in the attempt).
Brown would be pro-American but not enamoured of republican neo-cons. As one well informed source puts it, this son of the manse "is sufficiently 'Old' Labour to be suspicious and slightly contemptuous of certain kinds of power". So Labour MPs would not expect to find him conspicuously enjoying the trappings of power like Blair alongside President Bush in White House press conferences. But would his global view be so different? Blair is plainly frustrated by suggestions that the world would look a very different place had he and Bush not been at the helm post 9/11. Brown supported the war, as did Cameron.
If either has an alternative to his vision for securing Britain's safety by liberal interventionism and "spreading democracy" through the Middle East and the wider world, Blair has yet to hear it.
Indeed some think he could usefully try to force greater clarity about their foreign policy thinking from both would-be prime ministers before quitting the stage.
The problem is that while the prime minister wants to talk about Britain's role in a changing and dangerous world, the audience isn't really listening any more. Voters know that this historic three-times election winner is now in the departure lounge and that, as the Christmas festivities come to a close, the media will swiftly return to the question of uppermost concern to the political class - when will he finally take-off?
Informed insiders say the answer could turn on how much Blair really wants to help his party and his successor. Despite the pain caused by last September's "coup" attempt, the current indications are that Blair and Brown are again working for the promised "smooth transition". That certainly points to sooner rather than later.
Commentators will wisely hedge their bets. Some consequently hint that Blair might even be preparing to pack his bags by the time this article appears. Why stay to take the rap for the predicted bad results in Scotland, Wales and the English local elections in May? However if clocking-up 10 years in Number 10 has the pulling power widely assumed, Blair might give the party an unexpected fillip at the polls by formally announcing his resignation on his 10th anniversary two days before. That would enable an eight-week leadership contest, and see a new prime minister and cabinet installed by July, with plenty of time for them to read themselves into their new jobs over the summer recess.
An attempt to delay to July on the other hand, combined with bad elections results, might inevitably be seen as a last stand against a Brown succession and could well trigger another rebellion - destroying any notion of a smooth transition and handing a gift to a Conservative party which is doing much better under Cameron but still nowhere near well enough.
Like the rest of us, the Labour Party cannot know how much it might miss Blair until he is gone. And only then can Cameron begin to grasp the real scale of the challenge ahead. The one certainty is that a distinctly phoney period in British politics is finally coming to an end.