BUT SOME PEOPLE DON'T LIKE TONY

Nothing offends like success, and,

says Anne McElvoy, our warrior PM is

making new enemies in New Labour

GORE VIDAL told us that whenever he heard of a friend's success, a little bit of him died. The Labour party is getting very fed up with Mr Blair's successes.

Its relationship to its leader has always been a convoluted mixture of pride that they could finally produce a winner and scepticism, verging on dislike, of the man who achieved the victory and enjoys the spoils. This time, it's worse because international conflicts are the political arena in which Mr Blair shines most, He is a walking example of the Nato alliance, believing strongly that America can use its force for the good, but diligently weaving a web of European support. Being Blair, he wants it both ways. Being Blair, he'll probably get it.

The revival of Britain's bridging role may have impressed George Bush, but it is anathema to his own party. It isn't just the usual suspects. Blair, moans one ex-minister Isn't content with being Prime Minister, he wants to be the leader of the free world'. Another rising Cabinet mid-ranker toes the line on television and radio, but when we begin to discuss the details off air, he starts muttering about 'unclear war aims' and the 'possibility' of escalation and reprisal. In other words, he'll be onside when it comes to backing military action as long as it succeeds quickly and painlessly. Anything longer, more fraught and more, well, warlike and he's suddenly raising eyebrows and looking at a point in the middle distance.

Mr Blair is aware that even the loyal Labour ranks at Westminster are inserting this sort of small print into their support. Even those who are, on paper, in favour of military action to unearth bin Laden and unseat the Taleban in Afghanistan hedge their arguments with the limits of what should be done, rather than the determination to succeed. The grammar of Labour's conflict is full of subclauses. New Labour will support Blair if they can get bin laden in a surgical strike but not if it means a broader assault on Afghanistan — and so on.

Faced with the prospect of being iffed and butted by the ingrates around him, Mr Blair has taken the straightforward way out and simply abandoned talking to most of his colleagues at all. Cabinet met once last Thursday for an hour and, as my mole at the far end of the table put it, You looked at his face and the set of his shoulders and you just knew that the best thing to say was nothing at all.' L'cstat — c'est lui.

Instead, he leans heavily on the Kosovo campaign 'A' team of Jonathan Powell and Alastair Campbell. and now joined by the urbane David Manning as the favourite Foreign Office import of the moment. Manning is head of European affairs and his closeness to Blair (he joined the PM, Powell and Campbell at the dinner with George Bush in Washington) is a sign of the Prime Minister's determination not to be cast as having 'gone American' since 11 September.

Hence, too, the appearance of the German Chancellor Gerhard SchrOder at the Labour conference. Mr Blair has his own longer war aims to consider, and one of them is to keep open his European flank, lest the opportunity to attempt euro entry should present itself in the next few years.

Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the Chief of the Defence Staff, has to establish a working relationship with the PM to rival that of his wily predecessor Charles Guthrie, the most political of generals, whose nous impressed Blair during Kosovo. John Scarlett, the former head of security and a man of unstuffy but focused manner, has been appointed to the key post of chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, grading intelligence from the various agencies. Scarlett is especially well-regarded because he links his assessments to the broader geopolitical consequences. Blair hates departrnentalitis. A new cast of characters is emerging in the secret and semi-secret parts of Whitehall: not so much Blairite as Blairised in their manner, able to 'read across' a number of areas. It's out with the plummy pomposity and in with understate ment and, of course, a tinge of self-deprecation.

As far as Blair is concerned, the secret of getting his part in an Alliance activity right is for this team to get to work on the individual links and personal alliances that keep Britain positioned alongside the United States without separating off from the European mainstream. He sees his role as that of storyteller-in-chief, turning the narrative of events into an argument that will keep public opinion with him. The communications strategy is to stem the fears of the endless 'whatabouts' and 'what-ifs' by redirecting attention to the basic, unescapable choice of doing something versus doing nothing.

He demands strong public back-up from Gordon Brown and David Blunkett — who is being assiduouly presented by No. 10 as the alternative successor to Gordon. Otherwise, he is pretty uninterested in what his senior ranks think. Naturally they pick up this indifference and resent it. The more Blair communicates directly with middle England through his stiffen-the-sinews speech at Labour conference and those brooding-butdetermined photo calls, the more they sense their irrelevance and resent it.

It's not just that 'Old' Labour despises 'New' Labour or that doves hate hawks. It goes deeper, or rather wider, than that. The spectacle of Blair the war leader raises hackles across the spectrum. I asked a shadow Cabinet member — usually a loyal Blairite — what he thought of the speech. He made a swift vomiting gesture and muttered, 'Very gung-ho'. Gung-ho is the phrase that has become code in and around Labour for 'selfaggrandising warmonger'.

In the screaming maw of the Grand Hotel. amid the drunken babble of the early hours, I bumped into a former minister who started a long and unprompted rant about 'General Blair' and concluded 'Who the fuck does he think he is?' My interlocutor was a bit drunk and more than a bit sacked, which might account for the ripe intensity of his rhetoric. But he's got the mood of the party pretty spot-on. The sight of Mr Blair's well-groomed head so far above the parapet at the side of George Bush makes a lot of even moderate Labourites feel queasy.

Blair doesn't care — or need to care — as yet. His message is honed, as it always is, for television. He looks over the heads of his party and into the eyes of the rest of the country. It's you and me he wants to convince — he left the Labour party a long time ago.

But I recognise the first signs of dissent in the New Labour tribe, They are not expressed volubly, but through evasions and conditionals, through gestures and twitches and sentences left hanging in the air. If it gets dirty and difficult, he will discover pretty soon that he, too, is a target — and that the knives in the back come from very close to home.

Anne McElvoy is executive editor of the Independent on Sunday and an Independent columnist.