HAT HAPPENS when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? We may be about to find out, as an increasingly isolated and frazzled Tony Blair confronts a growing and truly massive tide of popular opposition to his support for a US war on Iraq.
For the first time since Blair took over as Labour leader - apparently sweeping all before him as he ditched Clause Four and most of the party's traditional political reference points and wheeled in his own neoliberal agenda - he can be seen as vulnerable to a concerted challenge within the Labour Party.
So isolated has Blair become that he has left himself no room for retreat: as all his justifications for war have collapsed one by one, he has tied his colours to the mast of a "moral" war with the aim of "liberating" Iraq from Saddam Hussein - regime change - in the desperate hope of winning support.
But Blair knows that the only way he can emerge from this claiming to have been right all along is if the war is quick and .... "clean", with the aerial bombardment triggering an immediate collapse of Saddam's army, and the invading troops welcomed by a grateful population into Baghdad - as the US hawks insist they will be.
If, on the other hand the war unleashed by Blair's friend George Bush results in massive civilian casualties, or prolonged battles as Iraqis fight back, or trigger a wider destabilisation of the Middle East, Blair will find himself in deep trouble.
The biggest-ever political protest march in Britain on February 15 was followed less than a fortnight later by the biggest-ever parliamentary revolt, as 122 of Blair's own party backbenchers defied a 3-line whip and voted for an amendment declaring that the case for war had not been proven.
It has been significant that the parliamentary opposition to the war drive has gone well beyond the established Labour left, and brought in former Blair ministers.
But for the trade unionists, Labour Party ....
joined the campaign to stop it, Blair's isolation offers a new opportunity. N
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campaign need not be restricted to affiliatdrift of Labour policies.
in defiance of the mass of public opinion. .... members and all those countless thousands of ordinary working people who have recognised it as a reactionary war, and
Now is the time to build a mass campaign to force the key warBlair to resign. This ed unions or to Labour Party bodies, but reflect should include wider petitions, reaching out to all those millions of people who are opposed to the war and to the rightward
The Stop the War campaign, by launching Democrats. its People's Assembly as a counterpoint to Parliament (where Blair claims support from "the Commons as a whole") is already trying to tap into the mass anger at the way in which political power is being exercised
port. ...a
Those who question the need to remove Blair point to the obvious fact that his most likely successor would be Gordon Brown, who of course is equally committed both to war against Iraq and to the neo-liberal domestic policies that have angered trade unionists throughout the public sector.
But nobody could seriously believe that a vote to dump Blair would support for Brown. Ousting the high priest of New Labour would have a huge impact reaching far beyond the party he has done his best to turn into a toothless replica of the US the left.
The fight to unseat Blair must in any case run alongside an intensified effort by the left to build a credible socialist alternative, with roots reaching deep into the trade unions and Labour's traditional working class supThe Socialist Alliance, which has its conference this month, must take this chance to step up the effort to establish its credibility and win support among the wide layers that have become politically detached from New Labour.
As this paper goes to press, a major debate will be held in London, in which George Galloway MP and rail union leader Bob Crow, who have until recently kept a certain distance from the Alliance will debate "Where is New Labour Going" with leading SA supporters. This sums up a new political situation and a new challenge for
The relationship not just between the unions and the Labour Party, but the Labour Party and the wider electorate is reaching a vital crossroads, with millions roused from passivity to active involvement.
There will never be a better or more urgent time to build a socialist alternative.