Mr Blair's great failure

Under the cover of a one-sided war a more discreet battle is taking place over the future direction of Tony Blair's government. One Cabinet minister has publicly challenged the prime ministerial approach to tackling inequality. A former member of the Cabinet has made his resignation speech in the Commons, flanked by two other dissenting former ministers, the choreography hinting at a new formidable alliance on the back benches. As far as the war is concerned, some astute ministers recognise that, however quickly the conflict ends, the way it started was a catastrophic failure for Mr Blair's foreign policy. What is more, the failures were emblematic, highlighting the limitations of his broader, Third Way approach to politics.

Mr Blair can claim, credibly, that there is a genuine dividing line between his approach to the war and that of the Conservatives, especially if the Tories had still been in government, led by Margaret Thatcher. She would have declared her support for President Bush, urged him to get on with the war, sent our boys off to the desert at the earliest opportunity and berated the weak-kneed Europeans – especially the perfidious French – for not following suit. The UN would hardly have crossed her belligerent mind. This was more or less Iain Duncan Smith's position 18 months ago when he gave "unconditional" support to the US in its military adventures.

The Third Way is more outward-looking, but only in relation to its objectives. It has given rise to a Thatcherite dream, with Anglo-American forces going it virtually alone, and Europe falling apart. Mr Blair sought to involve the UN and Europe, but in a highly limited way. They could be involved, but only if they supported the approach of the US and UK governments. If they "failed" to do so, Mr Blair would still back President Bush. The Prime Minister has convinced himself that it was France that scuppered the chances of peace by refusing to take part in this Third Way solution. He is one of those fortunate political leaders who believes passionately in what he is saying at any given time. The likes of Harold Wilson knew when they were being devious and were occasionally troubled by their deceptions, or at least were not good at disguising them. When Mr Blair blames President Chirac he is in the fortunate position of meaning it, even if his version of events is at odds with what happened.

In his speech in the Commons last Tuesday he claimed there was a chance that Saddam would have surrendered if President Chirac had backed the second UN resolution. But he had said himself several times before Chirac's intervention that he did not expect Saddam to disarm voluntarily. Therefore the claim that Saddam would suddenly have done so if France had come into line is rather odd. It is even odder given that Saddam had refused to concede fully in the face of President Bush's persistent threat that the US would attack Iraq without a second resolution.

The Prime Minister whispered in passing, during that speech last week, that there were "debates about the length of the ultimatum" that would accompany the second resolution. You bet there were, with most of the relevant countries seeking an extended deadline and the US only willing to accept an ultimatum of a few days. It is a myth that only France would have vetoed a second UN resolution in such a context. Russia would have done so as well, and it is far from likely that other countries would have backed the resolution in the first place. Most of them rightly saw it as a trigger for an immediate war.

No matter, Mr Blair at his most earnestly pained, believes that he was working "flat-out" for a diplomatic solution and France has provoked a war. Such a perception, happily taken up by the Eurosceptic newspapers, is a terrible setback for his broader and wholly admirable aspiration to end Britain's ambiguous relationship with Europe. The Sun and other tabloids are filling their pages with anti-French propaganda. Radio phone-ins debate whether French footballers in Britain should be heckled at matches this weekend. In schools, reactionary teachers make anti-French jokes. Mrs Thatcher could only fantasise about such a situation. "Up Yours Delors" is the best she got in the 1980s. That is nothing compared with the current venom. No wonder the Conservatives' perceptive foreign affairs spokesman, Alan Duncan, told me on the BBC last week that his party's Eurosceptics felt vindicated. Britain is back where it was in the late 1980s – the junior partner of the US – with parts of its deluded population forming fantasies about the cowards in Europe.

This was not the objective of the Third Way. Its aim was precisely the opposite: to bring Europe and the wider international community together with the US. The problem was that Mr Blair gave himself no leeway to challenge the military timetable of the US once the UN process had got underway. Perhaps he had no desire to do so. Either way, his ambition was big, his chosen means of achieving it limited.

To some extent, this applies to Mr Blair's domestic agenda as well, which is presumably why the Welsh Secretary, Peter Hain, has put his head above the parapet twice over the last few days. In a newspaper interview he spoke of the need for the Government to place more emphasis on the importance of redistributing wealth. This was not very naughty, but in a BBC interview Mr Hain went further, calling for policies that narrowed the gap between the rich and the poor. This aspiration explicitly contradicts Mr Blair, who has said that the narrowing of the gap is irrelevant, as long as those at the bottom end are better-off.

Normally Mr Hain is a little less specific when he throws the occasional grenade at his own government. Every now and again he calls on his colleagues to present their case more robustly. His latest intervention on narrowing the inequality gap has profound policy implications, although he did not explore what they might be. In the meantime, the raging divide in the Cabinet about how to reform the public services has only been put on hold until the war is over, with Mr Cook, another formidable advocate, joining his former colleagues Chris Smith and Frank Dobson, none of them easily categorised as reckless old Labourites.

On one level the fallout from the war has made Mr Blair's task as a party manager less daunting. Clare Short has shown that she possesses the most flexible "bottom line" in the history of British politics and will never make waves again. As for Mr Hain's intervention, it is only a threat when he proposes controversial policies to match his aspiration. He is unlikely to put his head that far above the parapet. His bottom line is pretty flexible as well. On the broader front Iain Duncan Smith has been so lacklustre that his predecessor, William Hague, finds himself in the unique position of being seen as a possible successor, simultaneously a former and a future leader.

But Cabinet ministers with private doubts are rallying around as Mr Blair emerges from the wreckage of his foreign policy. This is a new dynamic: the Cabinet coming to his rescue. They will expect something in return. The relationship between the Prime Minister and his Cabinet will be less one-sided once the war is over.