Domestic policy now has international dimension

One in 20 of the people opening this Guardian today (62,000 out of 1,204,000 on the latest readership figures) come, directly or indirectly, from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. And the ethnic proportions - since you ask - are not so very different for the Times and Independent. Who can argue with Tony Blair when he says that "foreign policy and domestic policy are part of the same thing"?

As India and Pakistan manoeuvre balefully over Kashmir, tens of thousands of readers here in Britain take an intense, special interest. Quite rightly. If efforts at peacemaking fail, then the tensions will inevitably spread to Southall, Bradford, Leicester. Concern comes umbilically attached. Home and away? It's a distinction in our society which has lost its old, simple meaning.

Mr Blair, of course, takes a bit of stick these days from opponents who think he's away too damn much, that he should stay at home and fix the NHS or the west coast line in person. Well, that's politics - and high-flown rhetoric about "proud new roles" and "pivotal players" doesn't help the cause. It will take more than fine words to make Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pervez Musharraf bosom buddies. But the connections Blair makes are valid enough.

"Dealing with international terrorism", in his latest (Bangalore) rendition, is indeed "vital to our economy, our jobs, our stability and our security". Self-evident to anyone examining the financial debris of September 11. The shape of the world today does indeed "mean that the self interest for a nation and the interests of the broader community are no longer in conflict". The question is how we give those perceptions flesh.

Our prime minister, thus far, has sought to do so by rushing from airport to airport. He's not to be blamed for that. If tackling international terrorism needs international action, then incessant shuttling is part of such action. Yet his shouldering of this burden himself, his downgrading of what foreign secretaries supposedly do, also offers a subliminal lesson.

The conventional thesis is to see Jack Straw as pushed to one side. No Kissinger - or even Carrington - he. Little Sir Echo while the boss hogs the headlines. But it's at least as relevant to look for something deeper here, to see the re-ordering of Whitehall priorities as a response to new world imperatives which automatically carve out fresh responsibilities as they go. If foreign policy and domestic policy are two peas from the same pod, why shell them in the ancestral way?

Be honest. The Foreign Office isn't what it was. Foreign postings aren't what they were. Ambassadors may hang on to some of their status and embassies may still be listening posts. But let's not kid ourselves about any of this. The most important work, such as it is, happens in the commercial sections - a kind of overseas branch of the DTI. The rest is ritual overtaken by digital communication.

If the PM wants swift advice, he doesn't need to parade through all the traditional hoops. He needs it close by, at his right hand. Is that - shock and horror! - presidential? Maybe. But it is also pragmatic, not personal self-aggrandisement. It is, perhaps, the way things are; and the way things have to be.

Every shift in the power equation brings vested resistance in train. Mandy Rice-Davies is back. "They would, wouldn't they?" Diplomats would wish to hang on to their traditional aura. Cabinet ministers would wish to appear very serious players. MPs would wish to seem more than lobby fodder. Political and diplomatic correspondents would wish to preserve their newsprint and broadcasting mini-empires in good fourth estate. These are all understandable, deeply conservative instincts. They assume that the way things were must conveniently remain the way they have to be.

But there's always a gap between what chaps would wish - wouldn't they? - and what has become necessary.

I think it wholly unlikely that Mr Blair will emerge as the supreme broker of Kashmir peace by the end of the week. The best he can do is provide a lightning rod of outside concern which will push Pakistan into enough gestures against extremism to satisfy India for a while. The worst he can do is fall flat on his face (as he did in Syria). I do not, however, doubt his courage or energy in trying to do his best. And I am rather short of alternative candidates willing to give it a go. The UN? But the UN has been involved for decades, achieving nothing. George Bush? Necessity is the master of inventing something else. And the absolute necessity which follows from it is to see wider horizons.

Tony Blair has begun to do that. He may perish politically in the attempt, eventually stuck up a west coast siding of derision. His reviled forces of conservatism - basically all of us in our own small corners - may drag him down. Yet, whether we realise it or not, the terms of international political trade are changing, just as he says.

Iain Duncan Smith implicitly acknowledges as much as he trawls Europe for bright notions to revive the NHS and the railways. Look chaps, I've got a wheeze from a Swedish hospital - or a French railway yard! Britain isn't best after all. Europe itself took a stride into the future last week which we underestimate at our peril. It wasn't so much that they ditched the francs, marks and pesetas: it was that they ditched them so smoothly, so efficiently, on cue. They pulled a lever and it worked. Now what about our own broken levers back at the ranch?

The worst thing about Mr Blair's missions-pretty-impossible is that they have to come coated with a patina of national pride. They seek to blend past glories with present imperatives in a way which hints at the recreation of an (intellectual) empire. That has a hollowness to it which doesn't work. But the message they send deserves contemplation.

There is no "domestic" policy now - against terrorism, for a buoyant economy, for health, education or racial harmony - which doesn't have an insistent "foreign" dimension. Ask Osama bin Laden; ask the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank; ask the Swedish health ministry or the German finance ministry; ask them on the streets of Southall. This isn't a New Labour idea being trendily foisted on a country at ease with itself. It is a concept that the government we happen to have is finding out for itself, from events, dangers and failures.

Tony Blair has become a pilgrim. He's attempting to tell us something. He is, in his fashion, discovering the world and trying to relate us and our attitudes to it. A long road to travel - and many tonnes of newsprint on the national readership survey. But this pilgrim is trying to talk about progress.