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- guardian.co.uk, Sunday April 6 2003 00.55 BST
The future of Iraq also attracts the dutiful interest of MPs. Their reflections on the conflict are becoming flecked with mordant humour. A Cabinet Minister offered me a lift back to the Commons after lunch. 'Look, there's a Union Jack,' he remarked as we were driven along. 'Don't tell the Americans - they'll bomb it.'
The war continues to engage the politicians of Britain in a semi-detached sort of way. Since the vast majority of them have little more influence over the direction of the unfolding conflict in the Gulf than anyone else watching it on television, most MPs are naturally more preoccupied with the postwar settlement at home.
There is near-universal agreement, among both enemy and friend, that Tony Blair has escaped any immediate danger. Barely a month ago, there was a riot of speculation that he could be toppled by this war; now, no one seriously considers a threat to him to be at all likely in the immediate future.
The war rebels hurt only themselves when they go suicide bombing like George Galloway. Or they get lost in contradictions like Robin Cook. So most of them are maintaining a sullen silence. That quiescence on the Labour backbenches should not be confused with happiness among those Labour MPs who were passionately opposed to the war - and still are. Few, if any, of the 140 Labour MPs who revolted against the war have had their minds changed by the progress of the conflict. They continue to believe that Mr Blair is utterly wrong about Iraq.
If the Prime Minister is proved largely right, many people in his own party will find that even more impossible to forgive. Between Mr Blair and a significant minority of his party, relationships have been so destroyed by this conflict that the bridges will never be rebuilt.
I was talking recently to a former Cabinet Minister, a mainstream figure whom no one would consider to be a headbanger. I was taken aback by the vehemence with which he expressed his hostility to Mr Blair. This ex-Minister declared that he had crossed a personal Rubicon. He now couldn't wait to get Blair out of Number 10 and would do what he could to bring on that day.
'I'm not organising to get rid of him. But if the opportunity arises, I'll be the first to help.'
Then there is another, even larger category of Labour MPs who reluctantly followed the Prime Minister along the road to Baghdad, but are extremely jumpy about what might follow. Let us call them the Anxious Tendency. 'It's not this war that worries me,' one Minister says. 'It's the next one.'
The Anxious Tendency need to hear the Foreign Secretary say often and loud that Britain will not countenance any crack-brained American notion of rolling on to invade Iran and Syria. They want to see hard evidence that the Blair-Bush relationship is not a one-way American street, which is why the tone and the outcome of the summit between President and Prime Minister in Belfast this week will be crucial. It was important for Tony Blair to get George Bush to travel to him, rather than the other way round, to make the relationship look more equal.
That won't assuage the Labour activists who hate this war. Public opinion may have flipped in favour of the conflict. Labour voters may be broadly behind the war. Not so the many members of the party who, if they haven't torn up their cards, will not fight for Labour in the forthcoming elections in May.
Number 10 is already pretty much resigned to taking a big hit in those elections as anti-war Labour activists refuse to get out the core vote and Middle Britain flinches from the tax rises which start biting on pay packets this month. This will not necessarily be of benefit to the Tories. One senior member of the Shadow Cabinet, though a supporter of the war, believes that their shoulder-to-shoulder posture has been 'dangerous' for the fortunes of the Conservatives.
Those voters who quietly support the war will be less roused to go to the polls than the enraged anti-warriors who can use the local elections to register their opposition to the conflict. If this proves true, the principal beneficiaries are likely to be the Liberal Democrats and - in Scotland and Wales - the Nationalists.
This prospect is already shaping the debate about how Tony Blair should deal with his restless party. Will he love them to bits with initiatives which Labour activists will like? Or will he bomb them to bits with more things like foundation hospitals and tuition fees that so many of them loathe?
Gordon Brown is moulding this week's Budget to be a 'hearts and minds' operation designed to impress the MPs sitting behind him that they are still members of a Labour government. I expect the Chancellor to make a special effort to sound tough on the rich and tender towards the deprived. And I suspect that a war-distracted Prime Minister has not had much time to interfere with his Chancellor.
The signals emanating from Number 10 do not suggest that Mr Blair is planning much genuine placation of his critics. The appointment of John Reid as Leader of the Commons is a slap to those whom David Blunkett disparages as 'of a progressive or liberal bent'. Dr Reid is not one of nature's conciliators. He will be of the Lyndon Johnson view that if you grip a man by the testicles, the heart and mind will follow.
It is some years since Dr Reid left the Communist Party to begin his ideological odyssey into the inner circle of New Labour. What has not changed about Dr Reid is his belief in party discipline rigidly imposed. When MPs voted on reform of the Lords, Dr Reid was one of those in favour of total abolition, the elective dictatorship option. 'John would probably abolish the House of Commons as well. He thinks that all you need is a Politburo,' jokes one of his Cabinet colleagues. At least, I hope he was joking.
Ian McCartney's promotion to the Cabinet as the new party chairman is more encouraging for traditional Labour supporters. He likes to style himself 'the socialist MP for Makerfield'. Trades unionists and activists have reacted warmly to his definition of his role as the party's spokesman in the Cabinet rather than the Prime Minister's enforcer over the party. One of Mr McCartney's most urgent tasks is to secure an agreement with the unions about funding before Labour becomes wholly dependent on the David Sainsbury cash dispenser.
What this doesn't mean is that Mr Blair is in a mood to appease his internal opponents. After all, Mr McCartney, like Dr Reid, is a Glaswegian, which is not a city renowned for producing softies. The new party chairman has previously defended foundation hospitals. He was also one of those most ferociously resistant to Ken Livingstone becoming the Labour candidate for mayor of London. Mr McCartney may not be a Blairite; nor is he a believer in allowing a thousand flowers of dissent to bloom.
Whatever the outcome of the battle for Baghdad, we can already see the post-war battle lines for the Government. A significant slice of the Labour Party will never, ever be reconciled so long as Tony Blair remains Prime Minister. For his part, he no longer gives a damn.
