Mr Blair will break this strike, but the truth is he could have won much sooner

Some union leaders may be nourishing Scargillite fantasies. They should remember Mr Scargill's fate

With so much in flux, there is only one conclusion to be drawn at this early stage of the firemen's strike. Tony Blair's luck has not yet run out. The PM certainly does not deserve this luck. As usual in a crisis – foot and mouth, the fuel drivers' dispute – the Government's initial response was panic and cock-up. Indeed, that is still continuing. The Sunday papers were briefed by Number 10 to announce that if the strike were to continue, the Government might well pass legislation prohibiting firemen from striking. There is only one problem with that: such legislation exists already, as part of the Tories' Trade Union and Labour Relations Act. Earlier last week, as part of its new Criminal Justice Bill, the Government had announced that it was proposing to repeal the legislation which gave it those powers.

But this is not a matter of one week's confusion. The fire dispute had been brewing for months, yet there had been no effective preparations to resist a strike. The Government merely sent out contradictory signals, via the minister best qualified to bewilder everyone he talks to: John Prescott. It would not only be a cliché to say that his right hand does not know what his left hand is doing. In Mr Prescott's case, it would be an inaccurate cliché. His right hand does not know what his right hand is doing, unless it is forming a fist. His mouth certainly does not know what his mouth is saying – so how is anyone else expected to make sense of him?

This strike might well have been averted by a display of understanding and will from the Government, backed up by a hint of steel. Mr Blair should have met Mr Gilchrist at an early stage to set out the facts. The union leader should have been informed that his firemen could have 4 per cent a year for two years, but not a penny more unless they were prepared for a radical modernisation of their working practices, which would include job losses.

If they were ready for that, a sum twice as large would be on offer, but before grabbing it, the firemen ought to ponder. Given that many of them had other jobs, did they really want to modernise and commit themselves to longer hours on duty? Let there be no ambiguity; if they did take the modernising route, they would be held to it. The Government probably ought to insist on modernisation anyway, but it had more urgent priorities for reform in the public services.

So why did the firemen not just leave well alone? Were they even thinking of striking, Mr Blair should have added, they ought to think again, for he would use all the power of government and law against them. As Churchill once said to De Gaulle: "Si vous m'obstaclerez, je vous liquiderai."

It might not have worked. The Fire Brigades Union executive are mostly a bone-headed lot, who only think when their knees jerk. But if the Government had made it plain that it was determined to resist industrial action and that it was braced for a strike which could last for months, the firemen might have backed away. As it is, many firemen went into this strike thinking that a brief flexing of industrial muscle could win it for them. Some of them deluded themselves that no administration with Mr Prescott as Deputy Prime Minister could ever turn into a cabinet of strike-breakers. The firemen are only now beginning to realise the scale of the challenge they are facing, and many of them believe that they have been grievously misled by a Labour government.

This explains the angry tone of Andy Gilchrist's latest remarks, including his desire to replace New Labour with Old Labour. Mr Gilchrist can dream on. He has as much chance of breaking Mr Blair's grip on the Labour Party as he does of winning a 40 per cent pay deal.

This does not mean that the Government will find it easy to force the strikers back to work. Though we still do not know how many firemen have second jobs, it will clearly not be easy to starve them into surrender. It may be, indeed, that in order to win the firemen's strike, the Government will have to find itself a new set of firemen, after treating the strikers in the same way that President Reagan treated the striking US air traffic controllers at the beginning of the Eighties: he fired the lot. As the dispute prolongs and attitudes harden, that is bound to come on to the agenda, perhaps by the early New Year.

If so, the firemen would probably be able to rely on support from other left-controlled unions. Much good it would do them. Such action would merely give Mr Blair another opportunity to sound tough, and to win.

To paraphrase Karl Marx, history repeats itself: the first time as threat, the second time as farce. Until the mid-Eighties, the strike weapon was potent. Left-wing public-sector unions could paralyse essential services and halt the country. With the defeat of Arthur Scargill's miners, however, those days were over. Since then, there has been even more embourgeoisement, still more fragmentation of trade-union solidarity, and a steadily increasing amount of privatisation.

Today's trade-union extremists could still cause disruption and damage. But if they did so, they would merely provoke the Blair Government into imposing further legal restraints while accelerating the pace of privatisation. Some union leaders may be nourishing Scargillite fantasies. They should remember Mr Scargill's fate. In much more propitious circumstances for union militancy, he went down to total defeat, thus exposing his members to the rigours of privatisation and redundancy. The same would happen to any union that was to launch a fundamental political challenge to the Blair Government.

This would, of course, cause upset consciences in many sectors of the Labour Party. The average Labour MP did not go into politics to cheer on a strikebreaking Labour Government, which itself was cheering on a belligerent Republican President. There would be anguish in the tea-rooms and bars; mini-revolts in the division lobbies.

None of this would worry Tony Blair. He has no doubts as to his ability to control his own party, including the beaten-dog tendency, as the former Labour left is now known. Nor has he any sentimental attachment whatsoever to the trade union movement (with the possible exception of the Bar Council).

If the Prime Minister were offered a choice between a dinner with three trade union general secretaries or a dinner with President Bush, Henry Kissinger and Rupert Murdoch, he would not even regard it as a choice. He has far more social empathy with the average global billionaire than he does with the average trade unionist.

In preparing himself for the subsequent stages of this strike, the PM has only one problem. His spin-doctors will be hard at work to conceal a vital piece of information from the British public: that if the Government had taken proper preparations, it could have broken the strike earlier, with less destruction of property and less loss of life.