THIS WOULD EXPLAIN LAST WEEK'S WOBBLE :

If Blair gets this wrong, he could be gone by Christmas : Secret government polling has exposed the risks of the Bush embrace (Martin Kettle, August 8, 2002, The Guardian)

Last month, unannounced and unreported, Tony Blair ordered a political operation that could have sweeping implications. Just how important could it be? Put it this way. Blair's handling of what he has now set in motion will determine whether 2002 will be his last summer holiday as prime minister. [...]

[H]e instructed his private pollster, Philip Gould, to conduct a secret survey last month. The survey covers, among other subjects, attitudes to the euro, the EU, the Conservatives and President George Bush. The results of the Downing Street poll, it is claimed, are extraordinary. Pro-European advisers are delighted that the poll has found that all senior Tory politicians are more unpopular than the euro. But the bigger news is that the poll has discovered on the eve of a possible attack on Iraq, that Bush is even more unpopular than the Tories.

If British voters have little confidence in Bush, as this and other surveys show, then any confidence they may have in Blair's own foreign policy judgments is likely to be undermined by his embrace of a disrespected president. If Blair is seen not just as a poodle, but as the poodle of a foolish and arrogant ally, he could find his political capital to do other things draining rapidly away. This poses questions that cannot be shirked by a prime minister who instinctively both wants to go to war with Iraq and to take Britain into the eurozone.

The scale of the cabinet's doubts also took Blair by surprise when they were voiced at a meeting in the spring. There is serious talk now of possible resignations in all ranks of the government if British troops are committed to a US attack without UN authorisation. Blair could probably withstand an isolated resignation, even from Clare Short. But if he lost Robin Cook as well, and conceivably even Jack Straw, then his own future at the head of the government could not be assured.

And if that, or even some of it, happened, then the goal that Blair cares about more than anything right now--joining the euro--would be in even greater jeopardy.

Is there a more repellsant thought imaginable than that the Brits would betray their brother English-Speaking people in order to put themselves under the thumb of German and French bureaucrats? Burke, Churchill, Mrs. Thatcher--the living and the dead--must all recoil at this prospect. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 8, 2002 7:26 PM