More from The Week

The last time I wrote about the deranged, unEnglish and presbyterian socialism which Gordon Brown longs to inflict upon us, I had a letter from a doctor. He said my piece was basically worthless because it had missed the fundamental point. ‘Mr Brown,’ the doctor wrote, ‘has Asperger’s Syndrome.’ Not being a medical man, I asked the most brilliant doctor of my acquaintance what he thought. ‘He’s just being rude,’ said my Second Opinion. ‘I’m sure he hasn’t.’ Neither doctor, to the best of my knowledge, knows the Chancellor. I am sure Mr Brown is not autistic. However, the Second Opinion provided me with details of the symptoms of Asperger’s.

All my life, till this month, I have felt more proud than I could say to be British. I felt there were special and irreducible things that we stood for and would, if necessary, fight for: freedom, decency, fairness, humanity, the rule of law. Of course there have been blots — the Amritsar massacre, Bloody Sunday. But on the whole the conduct of British troops during the 30 years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, or our record during the second world war, has been outstanding. We have been a force for good in the world. Today there is no pleasure in being British. We are almost a pariah nation. Ordinary British citizens are now starting to learn about the terrible things that have been done in our name.

There is a substantial monograph to be written on the relationship between the Prime Minister and Margaret Thatcher. It began with abject, one-sided adoration. Colleagues recall Tony Blair, as a youngish MP, meeting Thatcher. They say it was embarrassing, the look of dog-like devotion he gave her. The second stage came when Tony Blair was leader of the opposition. He did everything he could to suck up. He told her ardent supporters on the Tory Right — above all the group of Eurosceptic death-squadders whose hatred of John Major was so intense that they favoured anything else, including a Labour government — how much he admired her. These conversations were part of a conscious strategy to give out the impression that Blair was Thatcher’s real successor.

‘With lip-quivering intensity,’ to use the words of Michael Howard, the Prime Minister ventured into the House of Commons on Tuesday to announce that he will, after all, allow a referendum on the proposed European Union constitution. Mr Blair has styled himself as the man with no reverse gear, added Mr Howard, but ‘today we could hear the gears grinding as he came before us once again. Who will ever trust him again?’ This made great political theatre; and yet all opponents of the EU constitution will wish not just to ridicule the Prime Minister — as he fully deserves — but also to praise him for his honourable capitulation to public opinion.

As Tony Blair mulled matters over last week at Government House, Bermuda, where he and his family spent Easter at a very reasonable £27 per night, the future must have looked ghastly. It was not just the prospect of this weekend’s meeting with President Bush, tricky though that undoubtedly is. The Bush visit was at first envisaged as a modest attempt to give a boost to the US President’s now fading electoral fortunes. The Kerry campaign was as dismayed as Bush strategists were elated by this most irregular attempt by a British prime minister to tamper with the US domestic electoral cycle. It is puzzling that the British Labour party has not caused more trouble as Tony Blair continues to pander to the most right-wing US president in living memory.

The longer they stay in power, the more prime ministers lose their political touch. This seems to be an unbreakable rule, and Tony Blair is emphatically not an exception. For most prime ministers, however, there is an important compensation. The longer they stay in Downing Street, the more accomplished they become at the art of government. They steadily get to understand the secret springs and mechanisms of power. The funny thing is that Tony Blair has failed to mature in this way. Not only is he losing his political touch, but he is also no more competent today than he was when he entered Downing Street nearly seven years ago. There is a growing body of evidence to support this rather damning assertion.

After the 2001 general election massacre, a consensus swiftly established itself in the Conservative party. William Hague had fought on the wrong issues. Instead of Europe and asylum, his chosen battlegrounds, he should have championed health and education. Hague’s mistake, so conventional wisdom held, doomed the Conservatives to be the rancid voice of the malcontents, the losers, the racists: the detritus of 21st-century Britain. This persuasive analysis, associated above all with the so-called ‘modernisers’, swiftly took hold in Tory high command after Hague’s abrupt departure. It held sway under Iain Duncan Smith, and even more so under Michael Howard.

Spring has come late this year, punctuated by news of three horrible, doom-laden terrorist atrocities: the bombing of Shia worshippers in Iraq and Pakistan, the slaughter in Madrid, and the Israeli assassination of the Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. In Westminster there is an air of grim expectation. People’s habits are starting to change. I know one media couple who no longer travel together by Tube, a precaution in case they leave their children orphaned. A well-known political correspondent has taken to driving to work, rather than going by train. Bomb scares now routinely delay commuter traffic into town. The looming Easter recess will see the erection of a bullet-proof glass barrier between the Strangers’ Gallery and the Chamber.

Could terrorism turn the British political landscape on its head, much as it has done in Spain? Government sources naturally give this scenario short shrift. They argue that Tony Blair faces no comparable electoral test here any time soon. They add that the war in Iraq, though never popular, has never been quite as universally loathed as its detractors on both Left and Right have made out. Indeed, one famously robust Labour minister from a Midlands manufacturing constituency even claims that because of the war, support for the government has actually gone up among the much vaunted C1s and C2s — the cream of the upper-working classes and lower-middle classes whose support the Tories must regain if ever they are to return to power.