Tony and his tight trousers syndrome

NO GREAT cricketer, to draw an analogy, wants to hang up his boots in the wake of a duck. He likes to go out after scoring a century. Prime Ministers are no different. Tony Blair’s humiliation this week will make him cling ever more tenaciously to his job. In that sense, the events of this week are unlikely to affect the timing of the succession. Nor will it make any difference to his confidence that right is on his side, even if might is on the decline.

Indeed, better than that. He is now, as he sees it, on to a winner with the electorate — outflanking the Tories on law and order.

So perhaps rather less has changed than some thought in the febrile moments after Wednesday’s defeat.

Besides, there will now be a great demand throughout the Labour Party for a closing of ranks. Glad as they may be to have defeated a shameful attack on our traditional liberties, Left and Right in the Labour Party, rebels and pliant Blairites, are all in the same game — staying in power.

The Prime Minister may have trouble getting through his plans for health service and education reform — that was always in prospect. But some of the changes he proposes have a degree of support from the Tories, and they may be hesitant about seeking to defeat them in conjunction with the Labour Left.

Chancellor Gordon Brown, it is said, should now ‘ seize the moment’ and make a bid for power. But how? This part of the unfolding drama remains unexplained. Blair remains Prime Minister until he is displaced by his own party, few of whom want that degree of turmoil and many of whom are uneasy about Brown.

The sceptical observer will, in any case, say that if the Prime Minister can remain triumphantly in office after the disgrace and debacle of Iraq, after bringing Islamic terrorism to our shores and leading the party to a third electoral triumph, then he is an asset which no party in its right mind will lightly discard.

OF COURSE, you may say that things have come to a pretty pass when a Labour Prime Minister places apparently uncritical reliance on the police and the security services (shades of Iraq!), and is indifferent to the traditional feelings of the Commons about the importance of civil liberties.

But he has no shame about this. He enjoys putting on a macho display, perhaps part of the ‘ tight trousers syndrome’ so intriguingly described in Sir Christopher Meyer’s ambassadorial memoirs. HOME Secretary Charles Clarke was remarkably vehement about the importance of following the advice of the police, despite having been prepared to compromise on the 90-day figure before being sat on by Blair. And the public will support, sadly, any figure which sounds ‘tough’ on terrorism.

But just how the police settled for 90 days is still far from clear — perhaps they thought that 120 days would be chancing their luck. It is a figure which remains unexplained.

Of all the organisations whose advice I would accept on matters relating to the liberty of the subject, the police are so far down the list as to be somewhere on the next page — somewhere below the Flat Earth Society, the Caged Birds Club, the Clairvoyants’ Council, the Double Glazing Salesmen’s Benefit Society, plus others too numerous to name.

I cannot recall any other occasion when the police have actually lobbied MPs for their vote on a major issue. I find it distasteful. The police are supposed to steer clear of politics, not rally to the support of a Government Bill.

This also comes at a time when the standing of the police is at a low ebb. They are much in the news, of course, sometimes for acts of courage but all too often for some act of imbecility, such as arresting the elderly protester at the Labour Party conference and citing terrorism legislation as a justification.

Chief constables are also often in the news, sometimes for some ridiculous kow-towing to political correctness or for lecturing the public on road safety while notching up traffic offences themselves. Were the police to be consulted about Magna Carta, they would probably have dismissed it as too liberal.

The Meyer memoirs, with all their disclosures, are, in fact, a disgrace. I enjoyed every word of them.

Unlike other ambassadorial memoirs, they are seriously interesting. No historian writing about the period could possibly ignore his revelations.

You might argue that Blair’s casual approach to diplomatic proprieties demand a riposte from the ambassador himself. All the same, they amount to a breach of confidence which even journalists would regard as a breach too far. But three cheers for indiscretion. HOW sad to see the old Royal Ulster Constabulary — one police force I always admired — suing en masse for the alleged failure of its leaders to deal with post-traumatic stress.

All the recruits for this elite force, which never lacked applicants, knew what they were in for. Now they have become part of the compensation culture. The attitude seems to be that if there’s money to be had, go to law.

At this rate, all the Armed Forces will try their luck in the courts.