Mr Tony Blair entered his party's conference in Brighton this week with an extraordinary, indeed an unprecedented, level of public confidence in his leadership. He is set to emerge from it with his reputation enhanced by a visionary speech setting out targets for his country that are well calculated to ensure Labour enjoys a long period in power. His rhetoric combines evangelism and reform in equal measure, carrying Labour far beyond its traditional political and policy boundaries. All eyes will now be on his government as it comes out of a prolonged honeymoon period to confront difficult choices over welfare reform and European monetary union.
On the evidence of this conference the welfare changes are set to proceed as enunciated. Mr Blair talks of compassion - but with a hard edge. Rewards will be commensurate with contributions. There will be increasing personal responsibility for pensions, enforced training for the young unemployed and compulsory visits to the jobs centre for single mothers. There is a determined effort to match community and family values. Students will bear an increasing cost of tuition fees and personal borrowing to see themselves through third-level education. Housing and welfare benefit fraud will be confronted.
All this is identified much more rigorously than the growing inequality that worries many of those who believe redistribution still has an important role in levelling the social playing field in Britain, to prepare the ground more equitably for structural change in the welfare state. But there are few resources available to address inequality after the campaign commitments not to raise taxation above the Tory norms. The fact that such criticisms have been muted in Brighton will not diminish their thrust in coming months and years. But Mr Blair and his government have a great opportunity to push the welfare reforms through - and some chance to do so without hurting the disadvantaged - if economic growth can generate employment.
In so transforming the British welfare system they would ensure Labour's survival by substituting such a modernising agenda for increasingly irrelevant Conservative policies. Mr Blair's skill in seizing the high ground gives him unprecedented scope to marginalise his political opponents. He has been careful to cultivate relations with the Liberal Democrats this week, as if in anticipation of a political realignment which would humiliate the Conservatives even further on constitutional change and electoral methods. This part of his agenda is skillfully calculated to deflect criticism of the retreat from welfare redistribution.
An equally strategic set of choices confronts Labour in its European policies. Ministerial sources have been blowing hot and cold on the prospects of Britain joining the first wave of economic and monetary union in 1999. It seems unrealistic to expect it will do so. But it is more and more realistic to think Labour ministers believe both that the project will succeed and that their country cannot afford not to be part of it. As Mr Blair put it succinctly in his conference speech, "we cannot shape Europe unless we matter in Europe". And it was quite clear from the market behaviour of the last few days which direction British business, overseas investors and the City of London want it to go.
From the Irish point of view, it is very good to see such a clear-cut and determined British government articulate its direction and interests in the domestic and European domains - quite aside from its crucial role in the Northern Ireland peace process. In fact these policies are reinforcing one another in a welcome affirmation of coherence, message and style.