HE IS “untouchable”, a Tory MP told me, as we stood and watched his leader pledge to scrap all NHS waiting lists. “People say they hate him but they really don’t.” This was a good speech at a slick event, but surely he was taking toadying too far? Yet the MP’s voice was curiously flat. There was no sign of excitement. Suddenly all became clear. He wasn’t talking about the man standing just a few feet away from us. He was describing the man just down the road who was busy branding Tory NHS plans “the right to charge, not the right to choose” with the same nerve and verve that he had shown when he became Labour leader nearly ten years ago. As Michael Howard pledged what the next Tory government would do, my friend turned to me and said wistfully: “You know, for one month I actually believed we could win.” Tony Blair is back and the whole of Westminster knows it.

I first sensed this change in mood from my perch in the Press Gallery high above the Commons chamber. You can see things there — smell them almost — which never make it on to TV. Watching politics on screen is like trying to watch Euro 2004 with your set tuned permanently to playercam. You get no sense of the game as a whole. You don’t see how the teams work. Twice this week and twice last, I watched Mr Blair walk on to a bumpy pitch with plenty of opportunities for his opponents to score goals. After all, his party had suffered its “worst ever” election drubbing before he had gone on to sign a constitution for Europe that the British public say they don’t want. And yet on all four occasions Labour’s captain strutted in front of the dispatch box to the cheers of his frontbench team and backbench supporters. Was it really only a month ago that he was forced to declare on a trip to Turkey that he would not “cut and run”? So, what has changed? Labour has reviewed its recent results and decided that they were not as bad as it had first thought. The divisions in the dressing room have stopped — for now. Most important of all, Mr Blair has rediscovered belief in himself. He has won a new UN resolution on Iraq, secured his “red lines” on Europe, seen off the federalist Guy Verhofstadt and published a five-year NHS plan without sparking a party row.

There is one other sign that Mr Blair is back from the brink. He is chatting to journalists again. This week I overheard one reporter boasting to another that he had just been to see the Prime Minister. “Oh really,” came the response, “so have I.” Both had emerged from these chats with a fresh conviction that “he is up for it”. Mr Blair continues to believe that the best advertisement for what he is doing is himself.

This time last week I was marching on Waterloo with the 23rd Royal Welsh Fusiliers before raising a glass or two with the 71st Highland Light Infantry on the anniversary of Wellington’s great victory. This was all to illustrate the political battles being fought in Brussels over the constitution. I have always been a little suspicious of men who dress up as soldiers, and assumed that they would include more than their fair share of Little Englanders. I asked one fusilier if he hoped that Mr Blair, like Wellington, would defeat the French. No, he replied with musket on his shoulder and bayonet drawn, the whole point of the EU was to stop battles such as Waterloo. What a delight it is when people undermine your preconceptions and prejudices.

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