Stephen Pollard: War lessons that Mr Blair should apply at home

The Prime Minister has, over the past few months, had little chance to sleep, let alone clear his mind and reflect. But when he does find a spare moment, he will surely draw a domestic lesson from his handling of the war – or, more specifically, his handling of the opposition to war. The lesson is simple but critical: ignore the polls, ignore your opponents, and ignore the trimmers – just do it.

Just doing it was the only way to break the log-jam over Saddam Hussein, and it's the only way to break the log-jam over public- sector reform. Ignore the rebels, ignore the doom-mongers, ignore the unions – just do it.

In the run-up to war, we heard much about how Mr Blair believed that if only he could sit down and talk to the anti-war brigade, he could make them see the light. When he could barely spare 10 minutes to meet his cabinet colleagues, he nonetheless found the time to take part in a series of programmes in which he submitted to questioning from the public. The more they heard directly from Mr Blair himself, the Prime Minister was convinced, the more they would realise the logic of his position.

And the result of these efforts at persuasion? Nada. Nothing. Zilch. The Great Communicator succeeded only in communicating that he wasn't listening. Support for the war did grow – but only once it was clear that the Allies were about to win, and that Saddam was soon to be a goner. The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. A recipe which on paper looks unconvincing can, when cooked, become much more tempting.

The Prime Minister's domestic tactics should be entirely similar. Across his reform agenda he faces opposition not just from the unions but from within his own ranks. As he confirmed in an interview last week, he was not prepared to trim over the war and would have resigned if his opponents had won the day. The result is that he got his way, he did what needed to be done, and the world is a better place.

Yet domestically he gives out entirely different messages. Take the most immediate issue, Foundation Hospitals, on which the House of Commons is due to vote next month. The rebellion threatens to be larger than the 122 MPs who defied the whip over Iraq.

During the war, Mr Blair was busily seeing potentially rebellious Labour MPs, trying to persuade them to change their minds in exactly the same way in which he tried to change the minds of the women assembled by ITV to question him over Iraq. They proceeded to slow hand-clap him. The rebellious Labour MPs are no doubt planning to give him their own form of slow hand-clap by voting against Foundation Hospitals.

But, as Iraq shows, so what? What matters, as the New Labour mantra puts it, is what works. Before the war, the Prime Minister could barely muster a majority of public opinion in favour of action. Now the public queue up to express their support.

What matters is indeed what works. Opponents of Foundation Hospitals can protest all they like, but their huffing and puffing will only matter if Mr Blair lets it by reverting to the tried and tested – and failed – tactics of his first term: spinelessness. If he really believes that Foundation Hospitals offer a genuine opportunity to transform the NHS then he should ignore the protests, get on with it, and wait for them to start working – and for the support to flow.

It has become a cliché to say that "we should have finished Saddam off last time" – at the end of the Gulf War. Like most clichés, it is not only true but contains an important lesson. Our failure to deal with Saddam many years ago – caused by misguidedly allowing the opponents of action to set the agenda – compounded the problem. So Tony Blair's willingness in his first term to be held in thrall by focus groups, opinion polls and the forces of conservatism he himself derided, and the consequent failure to be bold and embark on genuine public-sector reform, has made things more difficult now.

The indications are ambiguous as to whether the Prime Minister realises, as with Iraq, that it is now or never with domestic reform. He certainly talks a good game, as in his party conference speech when he said "we are at our best when we are at our boldest".

On the positive side, he took on the Chancellor and most of the chattering classes over university funding. And he decided that precious parliamentary time can be spent on far more important issues than reform of the Lords, and kicked the issue into touch. But on Foundation Hospitals he has swung hither and thither, at one moment countermanding Gordon Brown's obstructionism, at another rolling over and avoiding a row, allowing – for example – the Chancellor to publish little-noticed guidelines on Budget Day which would neuter any of the hospitals' vaunted operational independence.

The next election is almost certainly only two years away. If Mr Blair reverts to his usual behaviour then he will have to rely on the same persuasive skills that failed to make an impact over Iraq. But if he learns the lesson of Iraq and gets on with real reform, he will have something real to show for his efforts. Iraq showed which of those options is the safer bet.

stephenipollard@hotmail.com

The writer is a senior fellow at the Centre for the New Europe, a Brussels think-tank