WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 (UPI) -- Britain's Tony Blair, looking some 20 years older and far more strained than the fresh-faced young prime minister who won his first general election victory in 1997, has now survived one of the great rites of passage of all politicians who aspire to greatness. He has seen his own doom, gazed into the abyss of defeat and personal humiliation, and survived.
In the space of 24 hours, he saw the great rebellion against his university reform bill crumple and fade, and his personal integrity has been vindicated by a senior judge, Lord Hutton, whose verdict was announced from the Royal Courts of Justice Wednesday.
There was "no duplicitous, dishonorable or underhand strategy" by the prime minister in the events that led up to the suicide of David Kelly, the Ministry of Defense expert on weapons of mass destruction who was exposed as the source behind the BBC's allegation that Blair's government "sexed up" the intelligence against Saddam Hussein to justify the war on Iraq.
Blair can breathe again. On Tuesday morning, he faced two mortal challenges to his leadership and to his political career, and by Wednesday afternoon he had overcome them both.
But that is not the end of the story. By looking more closely at how he survived, the price Blair paid for his double triumph looks formidably high. Take the purely political matter first, the unpopularity in the Labor Party of his plans to reform university funding by almost tripling the tuition fees to almost $5,000 a year.
Blair survived defeat by just five votes in the 635-seat House of Commons. Blair nominally has a majority of 161 votes. To misplace 155 of them is more than unfortunate; it is a disaster of party management that reveals the depth of crisis for his leadership. Blair survived because of three men. The first was Nick Brown, a former chief whip of the party and the key leader among the rebels, who switched his vote at the last minute. The second was John Prescott, the old Labor Party hand and nominally the deputy prime minister, who brokered the deal that saw Nick Brown and three other Labor rebels switch sides.
Often seen as a political hack and something of a buffoon, Prescott can now claim to have served Blair's bacon. He is owed some big favors, and as an old-fashioned Labor man who is close to the labor unions (he used to be an official in the National Seamen's Union) we can now expect a marked slowing of Blair's reformist efforts and a subtle shift in the government's political stance from Blair's modernizing center back toward the left. That will be Prescott's price and Blair has little option but to pay it if he is to damp down the fires of rebellion.
The third crucial figure was Nick Brown's patron and political ally, the chancellor of the exchequer and second most powerful man in Britain, Gordon Brown. The two men are not related but they are politically very close. It is the widespread view at Westminster than Nick Brown changed his vote because Gordon Brown told him to do so. The dynamics of the Brown-Brown political relationship allow almost no other explanation.
And this, for any observer of the edgy rivalry between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, is very odd. If Blair had been defeated or humiliated by Lord Hutton's judgment, then Gordon Brown would have become prime minister. He is overwhelmingly the obvious successor. And 12 years ago, when Blair and Brown were jostling for the party leadership, they reached a private deal over a celebrated dinner at the Granita restaurant on London's Islington Green. Under that widely reported agreement, Blair would become leader, and if he became prime minister he would at some point step down and hand over to Brown.
In the years since, a period in which Gordon Brown can claim to have delivered the longest period of uninterrupted economic growth that Britain has ever known, Brown's impatience for the succession has been painfully on view. This week, he had the chance to plunge the knife into Blair's back by allowing the rebellion to succeed, and Brown chose to stay his hand. Why?
The explanations among Labor insiders vary. Some say Blair has agreed to step down for Gordon Brown before the next election, due within the next 18 months. Others say Blair will win the next election and then step down. Almost all agree that Blair will go soon and that Brown's succession is guaranteed.
Except that this display of muddle and division and party infighting might so dismay the voters that Labor gets defeated. The opinion polls say that Blair has lost the public trust. And his angry and defiant speech to the House of Commons Wednesday, claiming complete vindication, may have inspired Labor MPs to give him a standing ovation, but it was neither an impressive nor a magnanimous display.
The allegations made over the past six months "go to the heart of the integrity of government, our intelligence services and me personally as prime minister," Blair declared, and he demanded that both the BBC and the leader of the opposition withdraw them unreservedly.
It was the statement of a man still shaken by how close he had come to political death, a man so relived at his victory that he did not yet realize how Pyrrhic that victory had been, and the price he had paid for survival. Blair, already the longest continuously serving prime minister the Labor Party has ever has, and its most effective vote-winner, now looks like a very lame duck.