Tony Blair ten years on

TODAY marks the tenth anniversary of Tony Blair's election as leader of the Labour Party. Ten years is a generous time in office for any party leader, though it is only half the time that Clement Attlee held the post and still less than Harold Wilson's 13 years. Nevertheless, Blair has already delivered something neither of these two wily predecessors was able to manage. He has won two successive majority terms for his party, once the Holy Grail of any Labour leader. More impressive still, despite Iraq, despite Hutton, despite Butler, despite the rows over foundation hospitals and student fees, Mr Blair is still Prime Minister and looks set fair to win a third general election next year. Like him or loathe him, Mr Blair is a survivor.

Yesterday, he navigated through yet another political minefield - the Commons debate on the Butler inquiry into the manifest intelligence failures that preceded the Iraq war. Though Butler avoided calling for anyone's head, the sub-text of yesterday's debate was that Mr Blair had led the nation to war on nothing more substantial than a hunch. To give the Prime Minister his due, most western intelligence agencies thought Saddam Hussein still had quantities of weapons of mass destruction, even if they were unsure how much or whether it was battle-ready. Equally, Saddam had spent years defying the UN and refusing access to international weapons inspectors, who were only let in finally under duress as a way of trying to delay the inevitable British-American invasion. Such is the way of mad dictators, and the world is better off without Saddam.

Nevertheless, Mr Blair stands guilty of slapdash government, of arrogance and of taking monumental risks with limited justification. He cannot ask us to trust his judgment in the future without better briefing.