THE Prime Minister hailed the capture of Saddam Hussein as the beginning of “unity, reconciliation and peace”. Echoing Margaret Thatcher’s injunction in 1982 that people “rejoice” after the Royal Marines recaptured South Georgia, Tony Blair declared: “The shadow of Saddam is finally lifted from the Iraqi people. We give thanks for that. But let this be more than a cause of rejoicing.”

The capture is a big boost for Mr Blair. The Iraq war and its aftermath has aged the Prime Minister, put him under the greatest pressure he has endured since becoming Labour leader in 1994, and left him facing serious criticism in the forthcoming Hutton report on the death of David Kelly, the weapons scientist.

He was the first world leader to appear before the cameras to comment on the extraordinary events unfolding in Iraq yesterday. Speaking from inside 10 Downing Street, Mr Blair said that the dictator was gone and “won’t be coming back. Where his rule meant terror and division and brutality, let his capture bring about unity, reconciliation and peace between all the people in Iraq”.

Mr Blair opened the way for opponents of the new dispensation in Iraq to come on board. To the Sunnis, he said: “There is a place for you to play a full part in a democratic Iraq.” To Baath party members, he said: “We can put the past behind us. We have a common interest, our purpose is a shared purpose, our victory is a shared victory . . . We are on the same side.”

Mr Blair said that those fighting the coalition were “a tiny minority of Iraqis who wanted Saddam back and must now know their cause is a futile one” and an “assortment of foreign terrorists who have entered Iraq.

“The rebirth of Iraq is the death of their attempt to sell the lie that we are fighting Muslims.”

He added: “The Iraqi people who were reduced to poverty and to penury by Saddam and his sons, desire no more than to live in peace to develop their nation’s wealth and to put freedom in the place of dictatorship.

“Muslims were Saddam’s victims. Muslims today in Iraq are the beneficiaries of his demise.”

He made no mention of the weapons of mass destruction which were the ostensible cause of the war, preferring to emphasise the evidence of the brutality of Saddam’s regime, “the remains of 400,000 human beings found in mass graves”, uncovered since the invasion.

Mr Blair maintained a sober tone. But a colleague who had spoken to the Prime Minister immediately after he learnt of the capture of Saddam disclosed that he had been overjoyed. Ann Clwyd, the Prime Minister’s envoy on human rights in Iraq, said that Mr Blair “was delighted, as we all are, particularly because he has been taken alive and he will now have to stand trial”.

Mr Blair was at Chequers yesterday morning when Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, telephoned to tell him of Saddam’s capture. The prisoner had not been formally identified, but the information was strong enough for Mr Blair to decide to return to No 10.

Mr Blair was back in Westminster at about noon and spoke briefly with President Bush before making his televised statement.

The failure to find the Iraqi dictator and the weapons of mass destruction that had been cited as the reason for going to war have been thrown at Mr Blair by his critics.

Now the Government hopes that the discovery of Saddam will help in the search for weapons and that former Iraqi officials who had been silenced by the fear that he might return will come clean.

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