FRIDAY the 13th - unlucky, perhaps, for Mr Tony Blair.
Conservative right and Labour left tore into the Labour leader last night, as, he found himself at the centre of an explosive row about his party's future relationship with the trade unions.
Labour's spin doctors spent the day in damage limitation, following reports in four British newspapers that, Mr Blair has contingency plans to sever the historic link with the trade unions should they provoke a wave of industrial unrest during the first term of a Labour government.
The reports based on a dinner conversation between four lobby journalists and the junior employment spokes man, Mr Stephen Byers claimed the party leader planned to ballot members on whether they wished the unions to retain their voting rights at the party conference and their seats on the ruling National Executive Committee.
Having failed to kill off the story, Mr Blair's office insisted: "These stories have no foundation at all. Mr Blair made no such, proposal and no such proposal is even under discussion." And Mr Byers suggested the journalists - including John Williams from the Daily Mirror - deserved the Booker Prize for Fiction.
But with no moves to discipline Mr Byers - and him maintaining "there are no plans at the moment to alter the relationship between the Labour Party and the trade union movement" - it was an unconvincing performance.
"No smoke without fire" was the familiar refrain in Westminster and Blackpool. And the resulting bitterness and suspicions left the Labour leadership facing a nervous journey to the party conference there in just two weeks time.
For most of the week the "New Labour" leader has enjoyed the headlines emanating from the TUC Congress at Blackpool. "Blair kicking us in the teeth, say union leaders" was probably the intended response to Tuesday's announcement that an incoming Labour government was ready to impose further curbs on the right to strike.
The cries of "union bashing" from the brothers played particularly well with the Daily Mail. While Tory ministers winged from the sidelines, the Mail recognised another crucial step in Mr Blair's "modernising" process.
Emboldened by such signals from "Middle England" Mr Blair went a step further - intervening directly in the postal workers' strike, urging the Communication Workers' Union to ballot its members on a fresh management offer rather than escalate the dispute.
Sensing the dangers of open confrontation, "wise heads" among the union leadership echoed Mr Blair's view that their relationship had changed neither was in the others' pocket; a Labour government would have to deal with a new era of industrial relations in which the battles of the 1970s and 80s had no place.
But the latent distrust of Mr Blair's modernising project came raging to the surface yesterday. "Ninety five years of Labour history betrayed over the Dover Sole and a bottle of Muscadet," cried one party supporter.
"They keep talking about an evolving relationship with the trade unions - evolve until we disappear," charged Mr Lew Adams, general secretary of the train drivers union, Aslef.
The veteran MP, Tony Benn, believed the plan had been "deliberately floated for electoral purposes".
And Mr Geoff Martin of Unison feared it would be realised: "It's the New Labour leadership's style. It will pick a fight, with Unison or the teachers, early on in a Labour government so it can be seen to be tough on the unions, then use it as an excuse to sever the link and introduce state funding of political parties."
The Liberal Democrat leader, Mr Paddy Ashdown, this week forecast a Labour government would be followed by "a realignment" in British politics.
Mr Blair will have to persuade his not so faithful party in two weeks time that that is not where he intends to lead them.
He will also have to deal with the unhappy consequences of this week - the renewed focus on the existing relationship with the unions, the perception of a party divided, and the electorate's continuing fear of an "Old Labour" movement which demonstrably does not share, or trust, its leaders' instincts.
