For there is evidence, echoed by the Times/Populus poll last week, that a section of the population has an irrational hatred, bordering on the psychopathic, for Mr Blair that echoes the unadulterated loathing directed at Bill Clinton by some Americans when he was in the White House. I think this bile factor is new in British politics.

Margaret Thatcher was detested in certain quarters but that emotion was normally offset by a grudging respect for her determination. Mr Blair, unlike Mr Clinton or Lady Thatcher, is the subject of the voodoo-doll treatment from both ends of the ideological spectrum.

Let me offer “Exhibit A” to advance this case. Last month I received a copy of an open letter to the Prime Minister from an organisation called Labour Women Against War. I was somewhat surprised to be on the mailing list as I am (a) not a member of the Labour Party (b) not a woman and (c) not against war. I would have thought that made me singularly unqualified to be the object of their campaigning.

Anyway, the signatories to this letter might be anti-war but this does not mean they lack aggression. You would not want to be on the wrong side of these sisters on a dark Saturday night. The letter was entitled “Mr Blair, Please Resign Now”, and this was the kindest sentiment expressed towards the Prime Minister.

It included lines such as: “Almost all the public believe you are a liar” (ouch), “there are even accusations that you are corrupt and have received money from US oil interests” (never heard that one before), “moves are afoot across the world to prosecute you as a war criminal” (really?), “the polls show that the British people, especially women, hate you” (direct, I suppose) and finally: “You are the most evil Prime Minister that Britain has ever had” (despite all that competition?).

Now I would normally say that the eight women concerned were obviously bonkers but I will not, partly because everyone is entitled to their opinion, but mostly because I do not want them to come around to The Times and beat me up, and also because they will probably all turn out to be senior executives at the Today programme. Nonetheless, I think that most people would deem this critique of Mr Blair to be somewhat harsh, but these sorts of attacks are now made all the time.

In a sense, though, one can understand why the likes of Labour Women Against War would be annoyed about the Prime Minister and want to be shot of him (literally). He has, after all, seized control of their political party and utterly transformed it, by rendering it electable. This is obviously a cultural as well as political disaster for those whose idea of a swinging social programme involves demonstrations, sit-ins and chaining yourself to the gates of one of many embassies in London. To respond by writing the odd swivel-eyed public missive is harmless, even therapeutic.

The Tories who hate Mr Blair with equal intensity are a different matter. They seem to come in three categories. The first, and by far the smallest section, are those with a genuinely principled objection to the alleged presidentialism brought to British politics by this Prime Minister. I do not agree with them, and wonder whether they were as hostile to strong leadership in the 1980s, but I can at least see and appreciate where they are coming from.

The second camp of Conservatives appear, in a strange inversion of normal roles, to detest Mr Blair because he is a class traitor. It is bad enough that he has pursued policies that they dislike but worse because he went to public school, attends church each Sunday and looks and sounds respectable. This sort of Tory often prefers John Prescott or Gordon Brown to the Prime Minister because they would rather deal with the traditional type of partisan opponent.

The third, and I fear the most sizeable sort, hate Mr Blair for rather more sinister motives. They are of the mindset that elections are fine provided that they always lead to a Conservative serving as prime minister afterwards. Anything else constitutes a massive failure of the system, an appalling departure from normal service, and could have been achieved only by a form of fraud orchestrated by dangerous forces presumably led by Alastair Campbell on behalf of his master.

It is this brigade, invariably male (Tory Men Against Blair), that can be the most bitter and twisted. Their vituperative contempt for the Prime Minister’s wife, for example, which surfaced spectacularly with the “Cheriegate” saga at the end of last year, rivals the arrows that were and are aimed at Hillary Clinton, mainly by those who dislike assertive career women and assume that they must automatically be Lady Macbeth figures.

This emerging coalition between Dave Spart and Sir Bufton Tufton is not doing much for national discourse. To dislike the trend does not require you to be the kind of sycophantic supporter who, if he were to bump into the Prime Minister in the street, would instantly whip out a lovingly preserved copy of the Labour manifesto of 2001 and, on bended knee, ask his Toniness to autograph it.

It demands only that you have a sense of proportion and an unease about conspiracy theories. For what political life today really needs is not Labour Women Against War or Tory Men Against Blair but an All-Party, All-Gender, Movement Against Poison.

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