Dean's Bid for White House Alarms Blair Allies

New Labour allies of Tony Blair are becoming alarmed at the prospect of a Howard Dean US presidential candidacy, fearing it will create formidable tensions in the traditional transatlantic Democrat-Labour alliance.

Amid concerns that a Dean presidential campaign would be dominated by attacks on the Bush-Blair invasion of Iraq, one ally of the prime minister has suggested that he would prefer anyone but Mr Dean as president, although in public Mr Blair will be careful to ensure Labour and Downing Street are seen as neutral in the Democrat race.

Downing Street's leading advisers have long-standing links with Clintonite Democrats on the Democratic leadership council (DLC).

This party organisation has become increasingly strident in warning that a Dean campaign based on an angry attack on President Bush will fail.

It points to the fate of an other leftwing Democratic candidate, George McGovern.

An offshoot of the Democratic leadership council, the Progressive Policy Institute thinktank, has strong links with Britain's Policy Network, a thinktank chaired by Peter Mandelson.

This has called for Democrats to elect a "Blair" Democrat, favouring a national security policy consistent with "the party's great internationalists: Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy".

An article by Al Fromm, the chairman of DLC, republished in this month's Progress, the Blairite journal, warns that a successful Democrat candidate must have a positive vision and "not simply conduct a shouting match to prove who can't stand Bush the most".

Mr Fromm also chides the Democrats for not recognising that "they must show their commitment to stay their course and winning in Iraq... whatever anyone else thought before, this is not Bush's war now, it's America's war".

Democrat opponents of Mr Dean have also been infuriated by his rejection of Clintonite third way economics as "damage control". Mr Dean has dismissed the DLC as the "Republican wing" of the Democrats.

In a sign of the foreign policy thinking of the so-called Deaniacs, pro-Dean websites were quick yesterday to highlight Tony Blair's alleged admission on Breakfast with Frost at the weekend that weapons of mass destruction may not be found in Iraq.

Mr Dean, originally planning to campaign on child development and healthcare, kickstarted his campaign by claiming President Bush, and by implication Tony Blair, had misled their electorates on the nature of the military threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Mr Dean has highlighted the Bush administration's discredited claim that Saddam was seeking to import uranium from Niger.

"I don't think it's OK to mislead people, whether it's deliberate or inadvertent," he said. "I thought it was fundamentally wrong for the president to mislead the American people on this uranium business."