OPTION FOUR:

Blair is plunging Britain into a crisis of democracy: Threat of war has created an unprecedented globalisation of public opinion (Seumas Milne, March 13, 2003, The Guardian)

This has already been a desperate week for Tony Blair. First, his handling of the Iraq crisis was openly denounced as "reckless" by a member of his own cabinet, Clare Short. He then advertised his growing political weakness by failing to sack her, emboldening parliamentary defiance and triggering the first calls by Labour MPs for his replacement. The following day, as Blair was slow handclapped by a television audience, the French president, Jacques Chirac, appeared to close off Blair's last hope of any new UN security council resolution that could be presented as authorising war by declaring: "Whatever the circumstances, France will vote no."

Now, most gallingly of all, the prime minister has been stabbed in the back by the very US administration for whom he has put his own leadership on the line. By publicly calling into question Blair's ability to join a US attack on Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld was clearly signalling the Pentagon's impatience with the chaotic diplomatic quadrille in New York and letting it be known that Blair's usefulness to his US patrons may be close to being exhausted. Some have suggested the US defence secretary was merely trying to be helpful, but given Downing Street's frenzied reaction and Rumsfeld's unilateralist convictions, that seems deeply implausible.

The two sides were busy talking down the transatlantic rift yesterday, but the worst of the week may not yet be behind Blair. President Bush has insisted there will be a vote on a new security council resolution by the weekend. The terms of the ultimatums being cooked up for it - including a requirement that Saddam Hussein gives a televised confession of his mendacity - make clear it is designed to be rejected by the Iraqi regime and pave the way for an immediate US invasion. And unless Chirac decides to perform a self-defeating volte-face, the expectation must be that the resolution - now mainly being fought for to save Tony Blair's political skin - will be vetoed.
If he sticks with the US none the less, Blair will then find himself at the heart of the political nightmare he has so long hoped to avoid: facing a likely wave of resignations from government, a parliamentary rebellion that might leave him dependent on Tory support, an explosion of mass opposition in the country and the likelihood of a challenge to his position as prime minister. He would also be party to an act of aggression that the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, warned on Monday would be a violation of the UN charter and therefore illegal.

Without an explicit UN resolution backing war, Blair will face a choice. He could try to ride out the tide of opposition in the hope that the war would be short, the known casualties relatively few and the military occupation at least initially welcomed on the streets of Iraqi cities. Alternatively, but improbably, he could perform a historic u-turn and refuse to take part in an unlawful at tack opposed by a clear majority of the British people. A third option would be to go for a low profile backup role in a US invasion of the kind floated by Rumsfeld and certainly discussed in Downing Street as a possible fallback position over the past few weeks - though that might seem the worst of both worlds, neither pacifying opponents nor offering full entitlement to the political and commercial spoils.

It's time for Option Four: break the Labour Party and lead the true believers in the Third Way and in a robust war on terror into a coalition with the Tories. The Blairites aren't true Leftists and the Tories aren't conservative, so forge a Euroskeptical, America-oriented, free trading party somewhere in the middle. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 13, 2003 1:37 PM