Britain: The British Prime Minister had a good week in Bournemouth, writes Frank Millar
Tony Blair emerges from Labour's conference week in far better shape than his loyalists had dared hope.
However, the Prime Minister's two most important and troubled political relationships - with President George Bush and Chancellor Gordon Brown - spell uncertainty and potential danger for some time ahead.
Alleged malicious leaking by the White House against a critic of the Iraq war carries more than an echo of the Hutton Inquiry still haunting the British Ministry of Defence and No 10 Downing Street. More crucial in the longer term, the continuing search for Saddam Hussein's still-elusive weapons of mass destruction and an increasingly effective Democrat challenge to the President's case for war risk a continuing and damaging read-across to a British majority, which appears to have reverted to its pre-conflict position and decided the war was unjustified.
Meanwhile, Mr Brown's self-declared status as alternative leader-in-waiting has the potential to distort Mr Blair's bid for "renewal" through domestic reform, and again raises a question mark over the one international achievement - British membership of the euro - by which the prime minister still hopes to define his place in the history books.
New Labourites tend to favour footballing parlance.
However, boxing terms might be better deployed to describe the main event in Bournemouth this week - a Blair/Brown bout which more-than lived up to its advance billing.
The moody Scotsman's first half challenge was passionate and thrilling, if short-lived - the defending champion's return blows delivered with ruthless efficiency of the kind with which he had claimed the title in the first place. Sent back to the dressing room early, Mr Brown and his handlers discovered far greater injury than at first appeared and were left to ponder a long wait before they might credibly make a case for another tilt at the crown.
There were no reported sightings of Alastair Campbell, Blair's departed communications director, in Bournemouth. And we can only imagine the lurid terms in which his famous diary entries might have recorded the event. "Monday. Always knew Brown was psychologically flawed. Gave conference a load of b******s about Labour values and as good as told Tony it was time to go. Tuesday. Tony went for it. F***** him over good and proper." Crude? Well, New Labour insiders can be.
Certainly Mr Campbell's tantalising glimpse of his diaries to the Hutton Inquiry tells us these are precisely the terms in which some of Mr Blair's minders see the daily battle.
The pressing question now is how to prevent this battle continuing to spread poison at the heart of government and throughout the entire Labour system? Some Blairites may persuade themselves this is suddenly less of a problem - the high and mighty chancellor having spectacularly over-reached himself and incurred serious damage in the process. Certainly in the short-term ambitious ministers tempted by thoughts of coded insubordination will think again.
Moreover, despite the steady loss of leading loyalists from his cabinet, there is still "ballast" on the Blairite wing, as one of the prime minister's aides put it yesterday. Education Secretary Charles Clarke and Health Secretary John Reid - appropriately the ministers tasked to carry through Mr Blair's most contentious policies on university fees and foundation hospitals - emerged from Bournemouth with their reputations enhanced.
Mr Clarke, a serious bruiser in the John Prescott mould, once famously wished Gordon Brown had stood against Mr Blair for the leadership so that he could have been humiliated and the nonsense about the Granita succession "deal" then dispensed with. Dr Reid, as he prefers to be known, is always up for a scrap and may prove a more formidable opponent for the chancellor than his predecessor, Alan Milburn. But here's the nub. The scrapping is set to continue. For the real deal that Blair did with Brown (which the prime minister must regret) was to grant him unquestioned control over the Labour government's economic policy - control which the chancellor has used to extend his influence into every department and translated into an effective veto on the question of joining the euro.
Is the chancellor's say-so to remain the litmus test for each and every Blairite proposal for reform in the quest for "world-class" public services - delivery on which was to have been the story of the second term? Can each future tussle over the policy detail (and the power of decision itself) really now be detached - and be seen to be detached - from the matter of Mr Brown's palpable belief that the top job should be his? Mr Blair is seemingly resigned to the fact that a euro referendum cannot be held during the present parliament. But can he comfortably contemplate a third - and presumably, for him, defining - term in which his chancellor continues to play footsie with a Murdoch press, which in turn regards Mr Brown as a hedged-bet against the prime minister finally delivering on his vision of Britain claiming her "destiny" at the heart of Europe?
Warning people against taking the Northern Ireland peace process for granted, Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness once remarked that unless the causes of conflict were removed the potential for conflict remained. So it would seem with a Brown ambition laid bare last Monday with the chancellor's unashamed projection of himself as keeper of "Labour" values and the party's "soul". Even if he remains silent (and this chancellor's silences can be most eloquent) there are plenty of outriders ready to stir the pot in a Labour Party still torn between adherence to Mr Blair, the proven election winner, and distrust of a prime minister many of them think too right-wing, and who at the very least over-egged the case for war in pursuit of an alliance with a neo-conservative US president.
It is odd to think how closely Mr Blair's fortunes may now be tied to those of President Bush; and not remotely absurd to think that Mr Brown's chance could come again a year from now, should the US electorate turn against their war leader.
On Iraq, Mr Blair and Mr Bush have no choice but to hang together. The future of the Bush administration is not for Mr Blair to decide. But what of his chancellor and would-be successor? The consensus is that Mr Blair has emerged from Bournemouth strengthened. However, many close observers believe the real measure of his strength will be whether he decides the time right to curb Mr Brown's power, and move him to the Foreign Office. The current betting is that he won't do it.