Tony Blair must be reflecting ruefully on Enoch Powell's dictum that all political careers end in failure. He has been trying to engineer an end to his own that defied the rule: to go at a moment of his own choosing, basking in the applause of a grateful public, having fought his enemies to a standstill. But there is no warm autumnal glow in prospect: the political weather for the rest of his Prime Ministership looks set to be unending winter punctuated only by storms and tempests. Public and party seem to think that his time is up, whether he likes it or not. If such a verdict cannot be changed, it has to be heeded.

More than ever in the age of television, there is a charged emotional element in the personal relationship between leaders and led, whose likes and dislikes are not strictly rational. At the heart of what has gone wrong between Mr Blair and the electorate is a breakdown of trust. In this case, the events of 11 September five years ago were a watershed. After the worst and most spectacular terrorist atrocity the world had ever seen, Mr Blair decided to stand side by side with President Bush.

It was a noble and decent gesture. But he quickly found himself in what was clearly a subservient role, a bit player in a drama scripted by the Washington neo-conservatives. Mr Blair never acknowledged the groundswell of anti-Americanism this triggered inside the Labour Party, which felt profoundly humiliated that Labour's leader was billed as the best friend of the most jingoistic and right-wing, yet least competent and uncharismatic, American presidents in recent history. Iraq symbolised this. The impression that Mr Blair doctored the intelligence evidence so that he could offer Mr Bush Britain's wholehearted support did fatal damage to his bond with the public, which time has not healed.

He fought and won the 2005 election on the basis that it would be his last. Since then speculation about exactly when he would retire has grown into a frenzy, with different factions in the Parliamentary Labour Party bombarding 10 Downing Street with advice, copied to the press, to make the date sooner rather than later. These things have a dynamic of their own, and leaks that Mr Blair has early next summer in mind for a dignified exit have satisfied no one. Nor is the clamour any longer coming simply from friends and colleagues of Gordon Brown, Mr Blair's likely successor. It is open to Mr Blair to defy them if he is determined enough, but other options begin to look increasingly appealing.

Mr Blair is aware of the breakdown of trust, but has not taken it seriously enough. He wants the public to see him as an honest man who has perhaps made mistakes. In fact the public seems to believe that he cannot be trusted in anything he says. Human nature being what it is, there is no way to turn that second perception into the first. As long as it lasts, that negative - and history may ultimately conclude, unfair - judgement of Britain's Prime Minister is undermining the relationship of confidence between government and governed to a degree that is now damaging to the democratic process itself. Whatever their motives, those who are saying "sooner rather than later" are correct. It is time to move on.

Back to homepage