ARE CRIME, education and health really the main reasons for the unpopularity of Tony Blair? That seems to be the message of recent opinion polls, such as the one in yesterday’s Guardian, which showed Labour trailing the Tories on these issues for the first time. If public services are truly at the root of Labour’s troubles, then Samantha Cameron should already be measuring up new nursery curtains for Downing Street and Gordon Brown should be phoning head-hunters about a top job at the World Bank or the IMF.

For public services are going to give Labour even more grief by 2009 than they do today, because from 2007 onwards the flood of money, especially for health and education, will start to dry up. As a result, Mr Brown will be under even greater pressure than Mr Blair today to reform and privatise public services. Yet Mr Brown will face even greater resistance from rebellious backbenchers, who will feel doubly betrayed if a Brown government accelerates the reform programme, instead of reversing it, as many Labour activists expect. Under such circumstances, Mr Brown will find it as difficult as John Major to govern the country with a small parliamentary majority of mutinous and disillusioned MPs. Mr Cameron, by contrast, will have a field day.

But before Mr Brown despairs, let me suggest another interpretation. Suppose it is not really public service reform that lies at the root of the Blair Government’s failure. While health, education and crime may be what voters currently complain about, it does not require a PhD in psephology to recall that the slide in Mr Blair’s popularity was precipitated by the war in Iraq and his uncritical support of the Bush Administration.

This collapse in support was particularly true of the groups of voters whose desertion is most dangerous to Labour — the left-wing activists who are increasingly staying at home in elections, and middle-class women and affluent metropolitan voters. Voters may no longer mention Iraq in the same breath as health, education and crime when asked for the most important issues facing the nation, but foreign policy is more decisive than public services in shaping attitudes to the Government, especially to the Prime Minister’s competence and integrity. Looking back, there are many cases where party splits over foreign policy have either destroyed or fatally weakened the prime minister — Thatcher and Major over Europe, Wilson over Vietnam, Eden over Suez, Attlee over nuclear disarmament. In contrast, there is only one case, the defeat of the Callaghan Government in 1979, where public services played a similarly crucial role.

Saying that Iraq has contributed decisively to the unpopularity of Mr Blair may seem just a statement of the obvious. But once acknowledged, it immediately suggests how Mr Brown could escape the trap of public service reform — and simultaneously set his own trap for the Tories.

What Mr Brown must do is repudiate the war in Iraq and Mr Blair’s subservience to US foreign policy. Such an announcement, preferably in his first week at No 10, would instantly score a hat-trick of political goals.

First, Mr Brown would win the immediate and undying loyalty of the Labour Left in Parliament and, more importantly, of the millions of disillusioned former Labour voters. Having secured the Left’s support, Mr Brown would be free to pursue an agenda of reform and privatisation, which he knows from his experience at the Treasury to be the only plausible policy for improving public services.

Secondly, a credible timetable to withdraw from Iraq would also put his own stamp on the new administration, draw a line under the dishonesty and spin that accompanied the Iraq invasion and emphasise that Britain was experiencing a genuine change of government, not just another reshuffling of the same old tired ministerial faces. This would help to reverse the slide in popularity among middle-class and women voters.

Thirdly, a decision to withdraw from Iraq and reverse Mr Blair’s uncritical obeisance to President Bush’s foreign policy would present David Cameron with an impossible dilemma. If he supported the new anti-Bush policy, Mr Cameron would unquestionably split his party, finally exhausting the patience of the pro-American, Thatcherite right-wing Tories. If, as is much more likely, Mr Cameron decided to oppose the Iraq withdrawal, he would alienate precisely the middle-class, socially progressive swing voters on whom he has been banking for a Tory revival. By identifying himself as a Bush camp-follower on this all-important issue, Mr Cameron would also confirm Labour’s strongest line of attack against the “new” Tories: it would appear that Mr Cameron’s progressive Toryism was no more than an advertising slogan, to be followed by a swing to extreme right-wing policies, in the same way as the “compassionate conservatism” of George W. Bush.

Of course, Mr Brown would face fierce opposition to a reversal on Iraq policy, not only from Mr Blair but also from parts of the Foreign Office establishment, who have always regarded the “special relationship” with Washington as paramount.

Mr Brown’s answer to the Blairites would be that repudiating the ex-Prime Minister’s disastrous foreign policy legacy was the price for saving his public service reforms. As for the Foreign Office view of Washington, this has become distinctly less starry-eyed because of the competence of the Iraq invasion, not to mention the personal rudeness of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. And a British withdrawal from Iraq would follow the precedents of Spain and Italy, neither of which have caused any fundamental damage to relations with the US.

There were hints last week from the Brown camp of a “week one” surprise, comparable to the unexpected transfer of monetary policy to the Bank of England in 1997. With one bound this decision freed Labour from its reputation for economic incompetence. Iraq now offers Mr Brown’s instinctive radicalism another such chance.

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