QUESTION TIME

Iain Duncan Smith asked three questions about the resignation of the drugs
adviser Keith Hellawell and three about care homes.

Game Plan

Yesterday the Government announced an incoherent drugs policy, its
best-known drugs adviser resigned in protest and the Prime Minister
provided a fairly tentative defence of his position at PMQs. But it was a
day to marvel at the political acumen of Tony Blair.

Keith Hellawell's resignation laid bare the serious weaknesses in the new
policy towards cannabis announced by the Home Secretary. With all the
authority of a former drugs czar, Mr Hellawell denounced the Government's
claim that it was being tough on drugs. He was clear that the message being
sent to young people by the reclassification of cannabis was that the
Government had given up the war on drug use.

Resigning may not be a very czar-like thing to do, more Ivan the
Temperamental than Peter the Great, but Mr Duncan Smith will have heard the
serendipitous news on Wednesday morning and considered that neither Mr
Hellawell nor his arguments would be easy for the Prime Minister to brush
off. The Shadow Home Secretary, Oliver Letwin, was already planning to
respond to David Blunkett's proposals by arguing that there are two
coherent policies, legalisation and tough enforcement of the law, and that
the Government had chosen neither.

With Mr Hellawell in support this becomes a much stronger argument. The
Tory leader will not have spent long before deciding to raise it at PMQs.

Tactics

In the event, even though it might seem as though Mr Duncan Smith could not
fail, Tony Blair did not suffer the smallest discomfort.

Some of the reasons for this are technical, to do with the way PMQs works
and with the way the Tory leader tackled his subject. For instance, a
resignation made in the open has, oddly enough, always proved far harder to
exploit at PMQs than a difference of opinion among colleagues who continue
to try to serve together. In the latter case the Prime Minister has to
bluster while explaining how incompatible views are really perfectly
consistent, but once a resignation has occurred all pretence can be done
away with and a more forceful answer provided.

So any leader might have struggled to make an impact with arguments that
had already been made in public robustly by Mr Hellawell, but Mr Duncan
Smith made life more difficult for himself by using, as he almost always
does, his right to split his six questions and asking only three about drugs.

A full explanation for Mr Blair's escape, however, must go far deeper than
such technicalities. Mr Duncan Smith treated the fact that Mr Hellawell had
resigned and that some Lambeth residents object to less-stringent policing
of soft drug offences as clinching arguments against the new policy. Mr
Blair does not agree and was therefore untroubled when pressed. He is
interested not in the passion of the critics nor the strength of their case
but in the paucity of their numbers. He responded to the Tory leader's
questions about the former drug czar by reeling off a long list of
supporters of his proposal. He knows from polls that most people do not
want cannabis legalised but also want the police to devote their time to
other things. Whether or not it is coherent, his policy is designed to
provide the public with what it wants.

New Labour is a way of governing. Tony Blair uses intuition and the latest
polling techniques to find where the political consensus is or where a new
consensus can be built. He then moves towards it. Any bravery he shows is
usually the result of him being able to see where public opinion lies more
clearly than commentators and opponents do. This has huge strengths and
makes him phenomenally hard to oppose. It has only one real weakness. If
the policies do not work, the public who inspired them will blame Mr Blair
rather than themselves.

Final score

Win for Tony Blair