A history lesson on ruling without one's own party

Mr Blair seems ready to go to war, and to brave parliamentary rebellion and Cabinet resignations

Rarely does the Prime Minister of the day have to choose between duty and the unity of the party. Since the war there have been two occasions, and both concerned Europe. In 1972 Edward Heath needed the votes of Labour members of Parliament to overcome Conservative rebels in passing the legislation which paved the way for British entry into the Common Market. And then, 20 years later, John Major needed Liberal Democrat support to defy his own dissidents in ratifying the Maastricht Treaty.

The only other examples during the past 100 years take us back to more dramatic events. During the First World War, David Lloyd George split the Liberal government, an event from which the party never recovered. And in coping with the slump at the start of the 1930s, Ramsay MacDonald fractured the Labour government and the parliamentary party supporting it. Both leaders, however, carried on as Prime Minister.

Conceivably, Mr Blair may be getting himself into the same sort of situation over the disarming of Iraq. He seems ready to go to war and brave cabinet resignations and parliamentary rebellion. And he even appears prepared to sustain himself with Conservative support, as the two left-of-centre leaders, Lloyd George and MacDonald, did before him.

Which precedents are the most relevant now? Much more was at stake in the pre-war cases than in the two post-war examples. Of course, passing the legislation which took Britain into Europe in the first place and then, at the time of the Maastricht negotiations, signed us up to substantial integration with our neighbours, were events of huge importance. They concerned prosperity, Britain's place in the world and, perhaps in the long run, the nation's very identity. But they weren't times of national crisis as were the Great War and the Thirties slump.

Nor is what is at stake now in the Iraq crisis on the same scale either, though closer, I think. It concerns the behaviour of the world's sole superpower and its newly enunciated and frightening doctrine of pre-emptive action. It concerns the effectiveness of the UN and Nato. It concerns Europe and the new divisions which the Iraq crisis has revealed. It concerns the Middle East, where the bulk of the world's oil supplies are situated. It concerns Islam and its relations with the West. And finally it concerns rogue states, armed with weapons of mass destruction, and international terrorism.

The Liberal government's problem in fighting the Great War was that it was not resolute enough. The Cabinet and the parliamentary party contained doves who didn't wish to give up cherished liberal principles in the struggle. They wished to maintain free trade, liberty of conscience and a volunteer army and navy. They were bitterly opposed to conscription.

It was on this matter that the party split. Lloyd George and his supporters believed that winning the war was the supreme objective and all else would have to be subjected to this imperative. If conscription was necessary it had to be done. The Prime Minister, Asquith, resigned, the Conservative leader declined to form a government and Lloyd George entered No 10 with Conservative support. He got on with fighting the war.

In 1931, the issue that faced MacDonald's Labour government was a run on the pound which seemed to threaten national bankruptcy. It was an article of faith that confidence in sterling could only be restored if the Budget was brought back into balance; no deficit. In the midst of a terrible depression, with unemployment rising to new heights, this could only be achieved through tax increases and cuts in public spending. And this last meant that unemployment benefit would have to be reduced. The bulk of the Labour Party couldn't accept this. It saw the unemployed as victims of injustice; it was the rotten capitalist system which had caused their misery. And now they were to be victimised a second time in order to escape from a crisis that was not of their making.

MacDonald, however, like Lloyd George before him, believed that what had to be done had to be done. In his final analysis, the trade unions represented a sectional interest whereas the party, as a government, represented the national interest. To yield to the Trades Union Congress, said MacDonald, would mean that "we shall never be able to call our bodies or souls or intelligences our own". His party deserted him. The King persuaded him to form a government of national unity with the Conservatives and Liberals. At a subsequent general election the National Government, with MacDonald at its head, won a parliamentary majority of 500. Lloyd George had achieved a victory on almost the same scale in 1918.

These electoral successes, bittersweet as they must have been, reveal the difference with Mr Blair's position. The two pre-war leaders broadly had public opinion on their side. So, more or less, did Heath and Major in their tussles with their parties. Favourable public opinion was the ace of trumps they held in hand; it outscored everything else.

Mr Blair does not have this advantage on Iraq. That is why he won't be able to govern without the wholehearted support of the New Labour party he has created.