Diary – 23 July 2004

To Portcullis House at Westminster, to take part in a Reuters debate on war and journalism. I notice John Reid, the Prime Minister’s most prominent capo regime these days, lurking at the back. His minder tells me that ‘the boss would like a word’ but a division bell saves me from finding out whether I am to sleep with the fishes. John Redwood asks a question founded on the premise that ‘the UK fights too many wars’, and I notice several Tory heads bobbing up and down in the audience. No doubt about it: the Conservatives are completely rethinking their instinctively robust attitude to military intervention. On the other side of the political trenches, Bob Marshall-Andrews, the irrepressible left-wing silk, asks whether Tony Blair’s support for the Iraq war was intended to please newspaper proprietors. I doubt it: as far as I can see, the PM was only worried about the Great Proprietor in the Sky.

Mr Blair revealed recently that he prefers the Clash to the Sex Pistols, which is apt, given that his theme tune in the past few months seems to have been ‘Should I stay or should I go?’ As real as Blair’s inner turmoil apparently was, his allies claim that his decision to battle on is now final. But for how long? The electorate, God and Gordon willing, the PM will have been in No. 10 longer than Margaret Thatcher on 27 November 2008 — after which, he could be said, quite accurately, to be going ‘on and on’. But what if Blair, famously obsessed by the verdict of posterity, has his eye on another landmark: namely, to hold the Labour leadership for the longest consecutive period in the party’s history? He has already lasted longer than Gaitskell (seven years) and Kinnock (nine) and will pass Wilson’s 13 years and one month in September 2007.