Just when British Prime Minister Tony Blair most needs his people to believe him, public scepticism after years of political spin is undermining him. Can his meeting today with Pope John Paul II help to salvage his moral authority and clear the way for war with his people's blessing, asks Frank Millar, London Editor.
"The moral case against war has a moral answer: it is the moral case for removing Saddam. There will be no march for the victims of Saddam, no protests about the thousands of children who die needlessly every year under his rule, no righteous anger over the torture chambers. I rejoice that we live in a country where peaceful protest is a natural part of our democratic process. But I ask the marchers to understand this: I do not seek unpopularity as a badge of honour. But sometimes it is the price of leadership. And the cost of conviction."
- Tony Blair, Saturday, February 15th
For those seeking and granted the privilege, an audience with the Pope must surely be an extraordinary moment in a lifetime. Like Tony Blair in one respect at least, the SDLP's Seamus Mallon is not a man to wear his religious devotion on his political sleeve. Yet when Mallon tells friends of his own visit to the Vatican he is visibly moved as he recalls "the remarkable personality and presence" of Pope John Paul II, and his acute appreciation "that you are dealing with a man who oozes strength and wisdom".
It is to be hoped the British Prime Minister finds similar spiritual uplift when he and his wife, Cherie, meet Pope John Paul II in Rome this afternoon. For there will be little political comfort on offer as the British prime minister shares the increasing burdens of his office. Frail though he may be, this pontiff has proved the most obdurate of church leaders in opposing war against Iraq. And Tony Blair may be braced for sharp reminder that, in the opinion of the leader of the world's Roman Catholics, its imminent commencement will mark a defeat for humanity.
Britain's Christian Soldier has also been having problems with churchmen closer to home. On Thursday, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster combined to challenge Blair on "the moral legitimacy" of conflict and its "unpredictable humanitarian consequences".
Their intervention followed the decision by Blair to defy last Saturday's unprecedented British peace protest with "the moral case" for regime change in Iraq. "Ridding the world of Saddam would be an act of humanity," he told Labour's spring conference in Glasgow: "It is leaving him there that is inhumane".
Dr Rowan Williams and Cormac Murphy-O'Connor ventured that, just as the prime minister would have insights into the world of politics to which they might not be privy, so they hoped for recognition that they might have certain moral insights not necessarily available to politicians.
In a crisis situation, the political tendency might be to think there is less time than in fact is the case, they argued - specifically calling for more time for UN weapons inspectors which might render war unnecessary, and challenging Blair to address the serious moral and ethical questions persisting in the public mind.
Understandably, Downing Street adopted an emollient tone in response to the churchmen. The extent to which the British public is exercised by seemingly-inevitable attack on Iraq - and by Blair's alliance with President Bush - had been sensationally confirmed by the million and more who marched on Hyde Park in the name of peace. And Tony Blair is no fool. If Iraq (thus far at least) has opened a yawning gap between his government and the governed, there was little point in a head-on confrontation with the two church leaders - least of all on the moral high ground to which they might claim at least equal entitlement.
That said, Downing Street's reply to Dr Williams and Cormac Murphy-O'Connor was, in real terms, every bit as hard-headed and unflinching as Blair's to the marching army of peace protesters a week ago.
Even as they journeyed to London, he had told them if they numbered half-a-million that would still be less than the number of people whose deaths Saddam Hussein had been responsible for. If they were one million, that would still be less than the number of casualties in wars started by the Iraqi dictator.
In the same spirit, Downing Street aides welcomed the churchmen's assertion that the moral alternative to military action could not be inaction, passivity, appeasement or indifference. Welcoming a "more nuanced" approach than was evident from the Hyde Park platform - where Harold Pinter was cheered for declaring the United States a country "run by a bunch of criminals . . . with Tony Blair as a hired Christian thug" - officials noted the insistence here that Iraq "demonstrate forthwith" its unequivocal compliance with the UN resolutions on disarmament. They also observed that the church leaders had not actually precluded supporting a war in the last resort. As the two men pray daily for those who must make "the ultimate decisions", Tony Blair will be praying with equal fervour that the same holds true for many of his countrymen and women who made last Saturday's the largest peacetime demonstration in British political history, and who have taken the prime minister's personal ratings through the floor.
The opinion polls certainly seem to suggest a political failure by Blair in the battle for British hearts and minds. For the first time this week, ICM found for the Guardian a clear majority of Britons against a military attack. The survey, conducted over the protest weekend, confirmed the damage sustained by Blair through his alliance with President Bush, his personal approval crashing to minus 20 - the lowest since the fuel protest crisis two-and-a-half years ago. As with previous polls, this one confirmed women more opposed to war than men, and a decline in cross-party approval for Blair. Intriguingly, despite the Atlanticist instincts of Tory party leader Iain Duncan Smith, it seems half of Conservative voters oppose the war.
With people on the streets last Saturday openly contemplating "the end" for Tony Blair - and the prime minister acknowledging that his leadership could be on the line - the findings fuelled excitable suggestions that Blair might be among the first casualties of war.
However, those gleefully anticipating such an outcome are in danger of losing the run of themselves. For ICM's Iraq tracker showed that Labour voters actually support military action, by the admittedly narrow margin of 44 per cent to 38 per cent, while overall 71 per cent of Labour voters think the prime minister is still doing a good job.
The message from this seems to be that Labour's performance on the public services and other issues will still weigh more heavily with the voters come an election - and that Blair's position as leader is a lot more secure than some rebellious backbenchers might have us believe.
Throw in a few additional factors and it isn't hard to understand why Downing Street sources scoff at suggestions of an isolated prime minister. While any threat to the government's hard-won reputation for economic competence is profoundly worrying, there must be some immediate comfort for Number 10 at finding Chancellor Gordon Brown's reputation now undergoing some serious revision.
It is said that Clare Short - until now considered the cabinet minister most likely to resign - has signed-up to Tony Blair's moral mission against Saddam. And even if Robin Cook did resign as Leader of the House of Commons, few consider him a credible alternative leader-in-waiting. Add to that the government's continuing clear lead over the Conservatives; personal ratings for Iain Duncan Smith are even lower than Tony Blair's; a Liberal Democrat failure to make any significant advance courtesy of the war debate; and confident predictions that the Lib Dem leader, Charles Kennedy, will likely drop his opposition to war if and when Blair finally commits British troops to action.
The cover for any Lib Dem volte-face, of course, could be that still-elusive second UN resolution which the polls tell Tony Blair would also give him majority public support for war.
Getting that resolution is plainly vital. The prime minister did not need former Conservative chancellor Kenneth Clarke to remind him of the potential peril in committing to war without broad and ongoing popular support. It would probably be unthinkable for Tony Blair to carry the Commons for military action courtesy of Conservative votes against a majority on his own backbenches. And the government whips will have left him in no doubt that UN authority for an American-led offensive is crucial to reducing the size of Labour's threatened rebellion.
Beyond the management of Labour and public opinion, however, the strong suspicion is that Blair is being driven to seek specific UN sanction by advice that the existing Resolution 1441 may not provide sufficient clear basis in British law to proceed to war.
In all these discussions and debates there is a tendency to overlook the fact that Britain is not America, and that the law under which the British prime minister acts is very different from the framework of executive orders by which the US president can command his intelligence and security forces.
In this context, as Peter Oborne observed in a recent article in the Spectator magazine, the most important voice within the Blair government may not turn out to be that of any cabinet minister but of the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith.
Quoting Whitehall sources, Oborne suggests that Goldsmith might find himself inclining to agree with the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, that Resolution 1441 would not provide unambiguous authorisation for military action.
Until recently, Tony Blair has expressed remarkable confidence that France and Russia would, in the end, sign up for a second UN resolution. If a little less bullish now, there is still a strong feeling in Number 10 that President Chirac over-played his hand at last Monday's emergency EU summit - in particular by alienating the 10 new accession members - and that the grotesque spectacle of Zimbabwe's President Mugabe enjoying Paris hospitality may have further weakened his position. Faced with US determination to act, moreover, many outsiders agree that presidents Chirac and Putin will not in the end want to take their stand alongside Saddam Hussein.
More fundamentally, Blair is opposed to the Chirac vision of Europe as a counter-weight to the United States, with its own common defence and foreign policies, and would fear vindication of the French approach should the EU push the Americans down the path toward unilateral action.
The prime minister had the French president firmly in his sights on Tuesday when he declared: "People who want to pull Europe and America apart are playing the most dangerous game of international politics I know." Blair is also able to argue this is not the will of a majority of EU members, and that the accession countries have no desire to emerge into the light only to find themselves caught in a new cold war, this time between Europe and the US.
However, a prudent prime minister will have allowed for the unforeseen and the unexpected. And it may well be that the up-to-date advice from his own law officers explains Blair's argument that he would proceed to action with America despite any capricious or "unreasonable" veto by another member of the Security Council.
Senior Whitehall sources this week refused to be drawn on the legal advice currently available to Blair, while acknowledging that the definition of an "unreasonable" veto might prove "a grey area". At the same time, key insiders say there is no question of Blair turning back.
For Tony Blair is a believer. As he told last week's protesters, he has a moral certainty and purpose equal to theirs. He has fashioned his own "axis of evil" - the potential threat from a combination of rogue states, weapons of mass destruction, and the new breed of international terrorists who attacked the US with such deadly effect on September 11th. After more than 12 years of Iraqi noncompliance, he is clear that failure by the international community to act will bear its own moral price tag: the collapse of the UN's authority and its reduction to something akin to the League of Nations - and the continuation of murderous tyranny in Iraq.
It is ironic that the scepticism born of years of New Labour "spin" should undermine and challenge him now. Yet demonstrably on this issue Tony Blair is neither prisoner of the focus group nor slave to the latest opinion poll. He is acting as leaders must, putting his authority on the line. War can always go horribly wrong and could still break him. Yet whatever the final outcome, Iraq has already changed the perception and definition of this British prime minister.
He is not the man so many thought they knew.