Mr Blair's foreign policy is certainly bold, but it is also politically risky

While Blair isn't putting himself forward to chair Middle East peace talks, he wouldn't turn the task down if asked to do so

Tony Blair's exhortation to "be bold" this week was directed at the domestic front. But the passages in which he took his own advice had more to do with foreign policy. It's true on the euro, of course. Every time he makes clear the strength of desire to join, he increases the risk that he could be harmed politically if it doesn't happen. It's worth repeating that while the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, would certainly not be damaged if there is a decision to hold a referendum, Tony Blair could be damaged if one isn't held. But it's also true on the Middle East.

As long as the process of securing a new United Nations resolution – or resolutions -- on Iraq that the United States, Russia, and France can all live with, and that offers Saddam what Bill Clinton yesterday called in his Blackpool homily "one last chance", is still in play, Blair and his party are in agreement. Indeed, that will have been reinforced yesterday by the warmth of Clinton's affirmation of how instrumental Blair had been in persuading the US to internationalise the conflict and in trying to bridge, through the UN, the gap between the US and the other permanent members of the Security Council. "If he weren't there to do this, I doubt if anyone else could," Clinton told the conference yesterday. And by the former US President's subtle warning to Labour Party dissidents not to assume that because they disagreed, as he did, with most of the Republican administration's agenda, that was of itself a reason to oppose that agenda on Iraq.

Those around Blair appear confident that the required UN ultimatum will be forthcoming. But as long as the Prime Minister declines, however understandably, to rule out the possibility that he might back unilateralist action if this process were to break down in New York or within Iraq, he is potentially way out in front of his party. That is "the bridge we would prefer not to cross", as the former US president put it in Blackpool yesterday.

True, Clinton also afforded him some cover for such a course, by pointing out that when Britain and the United States went to war in Kosovo, they did so without UN Security Council backing because of the Russians' historic links with the Serbs. However, this would not be enough to convince the Labour Party, or probably much of the country.

There is a detailed difference in Blackpool about whether Monday's party conference decision was to sanction military action only if it had UN Security Council backing and not if it didn't, as Clare Short asserts; or whether it gave the Government the flexibility to act in whatever circumstances it deems compatible with international law, as Jack Straw insists.

In spirit, if not in letter, it's almost certain that Ms Short who is right. After all, the National Executive chose to withdraw a resolution that was specifically designed to afford that flexibility, and that might have been defeated if pressed. In a global context, of course, this is trivial to the point of irrelevance. It's a conference decision. It won't determine the policy of the British Government, let alone that of the United States, one way or the other. However, what it does illustrate is the extent to which profound unease might still turn to open revolt in the event of a unilateralist, or bilateralist, war.

So that's one kind of boldness. Mr Blair's remarks on the Israel-Palestinian conflict were quite another. For here the political risk taken by Blair is not that he goes too much with the grain of Washington's thinking but that he goes too much against it. He went further than at any time since the period after 11 September last year when it seemed, falsely, that the United States might be ready to accompany its war against terror with new pressure on Israel to revive the peace process. His reference to UN resolutions applying "here as much as in Iraq" was widely seen by delegates as a – to most of them belated – acceptance that Israel is also in breach. In fact it was more balanced than that, its reference to them applying to "all parties" meaning both the Palestinians, and those Arab countries that persist in refusing to recognise the state of Israel, and its right to security.

Nevertheless, Blair's reference to a "viable Palestinian state based on the boundaries of 1967" and, even more, his call for "final status" talks – including, in other words, the issues such as the status of Jerusalem and the return of Palestinian refugees, on which the Clinton-brokered talks in 2000 foundered – to begin by the end of the year was a notably forward position. And while he isn't putting himself forward to chair such talks, he wouldn't turn the task down if asked by the relevant parties, the US included.

The hope in London is that George Bush will follow the example set by his father after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The Madrid conference that started the Middle East peace process over a decade ago was convened after that Gulf War was over. But it was promised before that, as part of the price the US paid to the Arab countries in the coalition against Saddam. By no means for the first time, Blair is playing a role, on the side of the State Department, in the ongoing debate within Washington over whether a similar approach needs to be adopted in the run-up to this war against Iraq. That doesn't mean at all that Blair doesn't want peace for its own sake; rather that he sees a window of opportunity when Britain has at least some leverage for persuading the White House to put pressure on Israel for a revival of the process. And to do so at a time when the prospect of war in Iraq seems to suggest it would be in US interests, and when the US has just persuaded Israel to lift its siege of Yasser Arafat's HQ in Ramallah.

On the timetable for peace, one thing Blair has learnt from Northern Ireland is that if there are no dates, however ambitious, nothing happens at all. However sensible in terms of internationalist logic, one of many daunting obstacles to this approach remains what some British ministers see with alarm as an unprecedented degree of influence and access enjoyed in Washington by Ariel Sharon's government. Another is the coming mid-term US elections, discouraging anything that does not smack of complete acceptance of the current Israeli strategy. All that those around Blair will say with any optimism is that Bush himself is more open to their approach on the Middle East than his Vice President or his Defence Secretary.

What Blair has done, however, is put the perennial question of how much influence he has in Washington to a further test. He is certainly right to press the Americans to kick-start a process, as he did at Camp David on his last visit. On one level, of course, simply to try is honourable enough. But the boldness lies in the fact that he has now ensured that if there is no result, it will be a failure, however explicable, of British foreign policy, encouraging the critics in their view that he is not, finally, in a position to lead as well as to follow. That's a risk. But it's a risk worth taking.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk