And then said, “having written this down, I couldn’t call off the war because of a hunch it wasn’t true”.Similarly, he promised, “the biggest policy consultation ever to have taken place in this country.” Well, he’ll have to go some way to beat the consultation forced on him over the war. And I haven’t worked out how to set the video yet so I’m buggered if I’m getting a DVD.”
And there was the crescendo of, “This is our challenge. Which bit, exactly, was worth that standing ovation? What makes someone stand and cheer phrases such as, “Because the world changes, we have to change.” Were Blair’s audience impressed because they felt most politicians would have said, “The world is changing so we have to stand still Computers? Bollocks to them. It would be a tragic irony if the tide suddenly turned in the US and Mr Blair found himself beached with only a defeated Republican President for company.d.macintyre independent.co.uk
More from Donald Macintyre.

And at the very least not to subordinate British interests – and to some extent his own instincts – to an uncritical support for Mr Bush which would actually hinder the progress of the Democrats. But the relationship now urgently needs to be more candid than it has been. And it is in Mr Blair’s interests to take account of at least the possibility, however doubtful, of a Democrat in the White House. Nobody is suggesting he doesn’t need a relationship with Washington, much less that he should land himself in the kind of trouble John Major did by being perceived to lend a covert helping hand to George Bush senior.

The real danger is that by refusing to stand up more vigorously for existing British policy in its dealings with the US, Mr Blair risks, in Mr Riddell’s words “being ignored in much of Europe and being taken for granted in Washington.”But the new context to all this is the admittedly tentative resurgence of Democrat forces in the US – a resurgence which Mr Blair should wholeheartedly welcome if he is true to his instincts on foreign policy, if only because it is more likely to realise his internationalist goals than a right wing Republican one is. But it is also, more self-servingly, a vehicle by which he can persuade the Eurosceptic press that he shares some of their concerns, while persuading the party that he is capable of standing up to the US. Gordon Brown’s argument on Monday that Britain can be a “beacon” rather than a “bridge” between the US and Europe is thought-provoking. Some of the talk yesterday about an instant withdrawal of US and British troops is so much fantasy.