Tony Blair - an excellent judge of timing or just plain lucky?

LONDON BRIEFING: The management style of the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, is starting to attract attention - and little of the commentary is flattering. Some of us are beginning to wonder whether there is a pattern to Mr Blair's behaviour during periods of crisis.

The Fire Brigade dispute is a case in point. First, Mr Blair fails to spot the gathering storm clouds. Then when the crisis hits, he appoints a subordinate obviously ill-equipped to handle the emergency.

Often at a critical moment Mr Blair leaves the country for important affairs of state. Then, when all that could go wrong has, he takes personal charge, riding to the rescue like the hero in some poorly scripted B-movie.

The amazing thing is that Mr Blair is either a brilliant judge of timing or is just plain lucky. With the BSE and foot-and-mouth catastrophes, little of the blame seemed to get attached to him and many people admired the way things seemed to turn around just as he took charge.

Mr Blair's interventions in the fire dispute last week were quickly followed by the leader of the firemen declaring himself committed to the replacement of "New" Labour with "Real" Labour.

Such declarations of attachment to the hard left of Labour's past gave the government more than enough ammunition and they promptly declared war. At the moment, the firemen appear to be backing down.

The firemen's decision to do battle for a 40 per cent pay claim was ill-judged from the start. Other public sector workers, like nurses and teachers, have at least as good a claim and have agreed to changes in working practices in exchange for much less than 40 per cent.

It is argued that fire stations are often in the wrong place, occupying long-deserted inner cities and far away from the suburbs and motorways where they are most needed. Shift patterns are inefficient, failing to recognise the peaks and troughs in 999 calls.

Fire crews, it is alleged, refuse to perform paramedic duties and will not carry cardiac defibrillators. The fact that there are 40 applicants for every vacancy is often mentioned as indicating something about the attractions of the job.

The firemen deny much of this but some in the British media continue with this examination of the union's case, with the latest argument being that the army seems to be coping with a typical call-out rate but with significantly fewer numbers of fire fighters than would normally be on duty.

It has even been suggested that failure to adopt more modern working practices costs lives.

Mr Blair has long feared a battle with the trade unions. He could never have dreamed that his first major scrap would amount to such a one-sided affair. Yet again, he has been amazingly lucky. Many chief executives of failed companies would envy him.

One feature of Mr Blair's management technique is to confuse the underlying issue. For example, he tells us that if he gives in to the fire fighters, mortgages will go up. This may or may not be true but it is utterly beside the point.

Mr Blair would be much more effective if he spoke plainly and told us that his public sector reform plans would be devastated by a 40 per cent pay rise for the fire service and that better schools and shorter hospital waiting lists would simply not happen. That he cannot speak in a straightforward way leaves many people cold - and suspicious.

Chris Johns is chief strategist at ABN AMRO Securities, London. All opinions expressed are entirely personal.