Labour Will Be Elected Again Under Blair

Up here, reports an East Midlands Labour official, we mostly still approve of Tony Blair, some of us strongly. A few of the members can't stand him. We had another resignation just last week, he says. On the other hand, we're also recruiting new members again. He's fairly confident Labour can retain this marginal seat.

This is just one snapshot of how an exceptionally frenzied week in the corridors of power looks from a distance. But it is a snapshot that matters, because it is the view from a seat that Labour won for the first time in aeons in 1997. It is also much more in line with opinion polls - in which most Labour voters support the government and its leader - than the current indignant mood elsewhere.

Immersed in the passions of the briefing war, it is sometimes hard to believe that the Labour party, never mind the country, is full of people who are far less exercised by who's up and who's down at Westminster. But this is, nevertheless, the case. Among the constituency optimists and the pessimists alike, the more common view is a plague on both your houses.

The view from the constituencies can deceive, of course. Members tend to be loyalists. They don't like trouble and they hate the talk of a coup. Yet even among MPs, where the disgruntlement is probably stronger than at the grassroots, there is hesitation. It's not going to happen, so why waste time on it, is one extremely common view. If it did happen, it would be bloodier than we expect, says one northern candidate, so it's not worth it. It would probably be good for my chances but I don't think it's right, says a sitting MP.

It's always easier, as with Michael Fish and the hurricane in 1987, to say that the unexpected is not going to happen. Then, like the hurricane, it comes along and all anyone remembers for years is the misplaced assurance. Even so, I think there is not going to be a leadership challenge to Blair any time soon, and I even think most key people in the Labour party now think there should not be.

That's true, crucially, even among the main protagonists in the Blair-Brown argument. It's worth stressing that we are talking about a very small number of people on both sides, far outnumbered by the commentators in the press. But if these groups are general staffs gearing for a fight, then they seem notably uncertain, and even reluctant, warriors.

On both sides, most of the talk takes the form of injured innocence, not of getting even. And even when one of these nameless sources says something really salty about the other side, it mostly comes in a regretful and confiding tone, as though there is a tacit recognition that it is not going to come to open conflict.

Senior Brownites, for example, insist that they are not a faction. They say they continually strive to hold things together. They grow indignant at any expression of disbelief. They earnestly promote last week's claims that, earlier this year, Gordon Brown urged Blair not to give notice of his departure. But senior Blairites privately offer a mirror image of injured innocence. We know we have to keep the coalition together and that we have to govern from the centre, says a senior minister. Ideologically, this is still the most united Labour government in history, Blair has said. The idea of Brown trying to dissuade Blair from announcing his departure, though, is dismissed with polite derision.

Even when it comes to the Alan Milburn question, the lines are not entirely clearly drawn. Brown himself is said to regard Milburn's return as a tragic error, but few of those close to the chancellor dispute that Milburn is made of cabinet timber. Top Brownites see the reshuffle in apocalyptic terms - a deliberate act of factionalism, says one, an endorsement by Blair of an attempt to divide the Labour party that is certain to weaken the whole. But Blair does not go along with that version. He wants Brown to play as much of a role in this election as he did in previous ones. Meanwhile, Brown and Milburn themselves have spoken twice since the reshuffle and they will quietly meet again today.

It is in the interests of tribalists and journalists to overdramatise last week's events. But not as much has changed as some in both groups imagine. The idea that Blair does not want Brown to succeed him when the time comes remains false. Milburn is not the anointed Blairite successor. Talk of an imminent factional Armageddon is overexcited.

As ever, the truth is messier than the headlines. With one or two exceptions, politicians are like the rest of us. They believe contradictory things at one and the same time. They are inconsistent. They take decisions for a jumble of reasons, some logical, others not.

Discerning the reality from amid the distractions has been unusually tricky this week. But here's my best estimate of how things stand. Blair's standing has been weakened. Brown is impatient for his moment. For the first time, Blair has been irked by Brown's manoeuvrings. The return of Milburn was a desire to have a good man back, but also an attempt to put some limits on Brown's occasionally provocative behaviour as leader in waiting. It will probably succeed until after the election. Nevertheless, Blair still wants Brown to succeed him - trust me, this is true - though there are no dates and no deals.

In spite of the bitterness of the past days and weeks, the perhaps boring truth remains that more unites Blair and Brown than divides them. Their ideological differences have been absurdly exaggerated. Any idea that Brown would have behaved differently over Iraq is pie in the sky. Any idea that Brown has more interest than Blair in the unions' call for the return of secondary picketing is for the birds. Brown is as much a believer as Blair in competition, the reduction of state subsidies and market flexibility; if you doubt all this, read Brown's Financial Times article last Friday.

None of this is to deny the real rifts and serious stresses at many points in the government, or to belittle the pain that so many Labour people feel. But the realistic view has to be that Labour will stand for re-election under Blair; that Labour is likely to be re-elected under Blair; that Blair may step down some time during the next parliament; and that Brown is deservedly the overwhelming favourite to succeed him if that happens.

In that sense, less may have changed in the past few days than some think. Faced with the election, the clear majority instinct within the Labour party as a whole, among MPs, in the constituencies, and within the unions who sat and politely applauded Blair's conciliatory speech yesterday in Brighton, is to hold together not to split apart. Never forget this movement's passion for unity, Nye Bevan once said. That's still a powerful truth. This does not mean that Blair is loved, or even that he is trusted. But he is still respected - and it will get him through the next few months unless he makes a foolish error.