IT MAY NOT have been quite the “Geoffrey Howe moment”, which would directly precipitate the fall of a successful Prime Minister, but Charles Clarke’s world-weary ruminations on the Government’s loss of direction did seem like the beginning of the end for Tony Blair. Maybe it was more of a Lawson-Lamont moment. Norman Lamont, it will be remembered, was the man who coined the phrase “in office, but not in power” to describe the drift of John Major’ s Government,after being forced to carry the can for what were actually the Prime Minister’s blunders on Black Wednesday. And it was Nigel Lawson who started the chain of events that ultimately led to Margaret Thatcher’s downfall, when he resigned in protest at what he saw as her meddling with economic policy in the autumn of 1989.

Mr Clarke, like Lords Lamont of Lerwick and Lawson of Blaby, was never going to be the one to wield the mortal dagger. The death-blow, for reasons I’ll return to in a moment, will have to be delivered by Jack Straw. Whether the loyal former Foreign Secretary will choose to play the role of Howe and Brutus, or whether the Prime Minister can dodge the fate of a Thatcher or a Caesar by going of his own accord, remains to be seen. What is undeniable is that the end is near.

Rather than speculating about the precise mechanism of the Prime Minister’s removal, it is more interesting to think about what all the anti-Blair ferment may mean for Britain’s future. The country and the Labour Party are demanding change and Gordon Brown has to deliver, but he cannot reverse or even slow public service reforms, privatisations or any of the other manifestations of Blairism that Labour activists want consigned to the dustbin of history.

For this there are three reasons. First, Mr Brown does not want to reverse reform because he is genuinely convinced that private enterprise and competition can deliver services more effectively than government planning. Secondly, he couldn’t afford to abandon Blairite policies on health and education, even if he wanted to. As Chancellor he knows better than anyone that the Treasury is running out of money and that the growth of public spending will have to decelerate drastically between now and 2009. Thirdly, the public wouldn’t welcome a reversal, even if they complain about the reforms under Blair. People want easier access to doctors and more choice in schools and they expect to be treated as customers, not supplicants or subjects. Doctors and teachers, meanwhile, no longer see themselves as public “servants” and demand all the rights of employees. Trying to restore the “public service ethos” would risk both consumer and producer revolts.

So what can Mr Brown do to create a sense of change and restore the direction of the Labour Government? Instead of trying to reverse the Blairite reforms in health and education, he could try to undo Mr Blair’s two biggest blunders — blunders that voters seem to resent even more than dirty hospitals or underperforming schools. Mr Blair’s fatal mistakes have been in foreign policy and the administration of justice. These are the areas on which Mr Brown will have to change direction if he wants to be re-elected in 2009.

The failures of the Home Office are currently dominating the headlines —– and rightly so. But this is not the place to discuss the causes and consequences of prison overcrowding or the Human Rights Act. Suffice it to say that there need be no contradiction between liberalism over human rights and a zero-tolerance approach to serious crimes of violence. Indeed, more liberal policies on drugs, illegal immigration and fine defaulters could go a long way to easing prison overcrowding and so allow violent criminals and dangerous psychopaths to be kept off the streets. Abandoning the costly plan for ID cards would free resources for better policing.

However, the real Achilles’ heel of the Blair Government has not been the Home Office. It has been foreign policy and in particular the Iraq war. Most specifically, the subservient relationship with George Bush has been the real cause of Tony Blair’s downfall. It is at this Achilles’ heel that Jack Straw, the only witness to the humiliations and betrayals heaped on Mr Blair by the White House, could at any moment aim his poisoned dart. Whether or not Mr Straw decides to deliver the death blow will probably depend on whether the Bush Administration attacks Iran before Mr Blair retires. If Mr Bush decides to bomb Iran, either directly or using Israel as a proxy, Mr Blair will either have to dissociate himself publicly from this vigilante action or face immediate political assassination, with Mr Straw delivering the mortal wound.

But even if such a Geoffrey Howe moment remains unlikely, Mr Brown should be preparing himself and the public for a big foreign policy shift. By announcing a dignified withdrawal from Iraq and explicitly repudiating the subservient Blair-Bush relationship in his first few days as Prime Minister, Mr Brown could clearly signal a change of direction, hugely increase his popularity, silence his critics on the Labour Left and force David Cameron to reveal his real identity: is he truly a liberal internationalist or a Bush-style neoconservative in “compassionate” disguise? More importantly, by reversing Blairite foreign policy, Mr Brown would be serving Britain’s national interests, and incidentally America’s, by emphasising to US voters just how isolated their country has become under President Bush.

When Mr Major took over from Mrs Thatcher he failed to analyse the real reasons for her downfall. Her fatal mistake, according to the media headlines of the time, were the Poll Tax and the political rows with Europe. But with hindsight we know that something deeper had gone wrong — Mrs Thatcher had subordinated British economic policy to German decisions. Mr Blair’s fatal mistakes have not been in health, education or even justice. They have been in subordinating British foreign policy to American decisions. Gordon Brown must draw the right lessons from his predecessor’s demise.

Times Recommends

• In the real world, the public sector must pay
• Playing politics in a land of double Dutch
• Be like the plinth people: not set in stone