"He [ Mr Howard] can stick whatever he likes on billboards about something in a book but what the public will concentrate on are the low mortgages, low inflation, low unemployment that we delivered and that he failed to."
With this revealing comment the British prime minister, Mr Tony Blair, dismissed efforts yesterday by the Conservative leader, Mr Michael Howard, to exploit the tension between Mr Blair and his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Gordon Brown. It has peaked in recent days, arising from a remark Mr Brown is quoted as saying to the prime minister in a just-published biography of the chancellor: "There is nothing that you could ever say to me now that I could ever believe".
Yesterday Mr Blair said flatly that Mr Brown never said this to him, a day after the chancellor conspicuously refused to deny it categorically. And yet when he came to identify main achievements of the Labour government Mr Blair reached out for the excellent economic management for which Mr Brown above all is responsible. By denying the quotation in this way, Mr Blair makes it impossible for Mr Brown to contradict him and remain in government. Mr Blair needs to identify political objectives for a likely third term in office after this year's election, to establish his place in history. In doing so he necessarily competes with Mr Brown, who has different priorities and hoped to implement them when Mr Blair stepped aside, as it is alleged he promised to do once the election is won.
It is a dangerous collapse of trust at the heart of Britain's Labour government, which Mr Howard hopes to exploit with a poster campaign asking voters: "How can they fight crime when they're fighting each other?" In similar vein he asked yesterday in the Commons: "How can there be discipline in schools when there's no discipline in government? How can they clean up hospitals when they can't clean up their own act?" At least it gives the Conservatives some real campaigning issues, after their failure to exploit other weaknesses of the second Blair government.
Few insiders deny that this endemic factionalism exists, based on clashing personalities, frustrated ambition and differing policy priorities hard driven by competing teams of advisers. The question now is whether it will implode politically on Labour before, or more likely, after, they have won a third term. Mr Blair may have little wish to reappoint Mr Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer; but he would probably face a leadership challenge in that case. He could not be certain of winning.