A BLAIR-BUSH news conference is just what we want, a senior Cabinet minister said yesterday with intended heavy irony before today’s White House meeting.

The remarks by the minister, a close ally of Tony Blair, reflect the growing worries in Whitehall about the political damage caused by the Prime Minister’s public support for the US over the fighting in the Lebanon.

Two polls this week have shown a high level of criticism both of Israel’s conduct and of Mr Blair’s handling of the affair. According to a YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph, more than three fifths of people think that Israel’s response has been disproportionate, and more than half believe that the Blair Government’s handling of the affair has been poor or very poor. Nearly two thirds think that Mr Blair is doing whatever the Americans tell him.

An ICM poll in The Guardian showed that 63 per cent think Mr Blair has tied Britain too closely to the US, including more than half of Labour supporters.

Public support has already been strained by the dispute over the American failure to notify Britain that bombs being sent to Israel were on aircraft being refuelled in Prestwick. The problem has been the lack of openness rather than the flights, which are likely to continue.

Moreover, as he will emphasise in Washington today, Mr Blair wants the Bush Administration to show more urgency in pressing Israel for an early ceasefire and acceptance of an international force.

The signs of impatience with the US have become more apparent this week. There is frustration within Whitehall at the risk that agreeing with the US to reject calls for an immediate ceasefire appears to endorse the Israeli approach.

Despite the latest signs of discomfort, Mr Blair has stuck to his longestablished strategy towards the White House of never dissenting in public, and is expected to do so again in Washington later today.

But there is now much less willingness to give Mr Blair the benefit of the doubt in the absence of evidence that his insider access has given him any influence. This is the price he is paying for the Iraq war and its bloody aftermath.

The fighting in the Lebanon has revived charges that Mr Blair is President Bush’s “poodle”, especially after the “Yo Blair!” leaked conversation between the two in St Petersburg recently. Mr Blair’s problem is not only the public criticism of his closeness to the US, but also cross-party criticism in the Commons, including that from leading Tories such as William Hague.

Many ministers, as well as Labour MPs, are unhappy and this may provide a rallying cry for anti-Blair critics at the Labour Party conference in Manchester in two months’ time. They agree with the criticisms expressed last weekend by Kim Howells, a Foreign Office Minister of State, about the level of civilian casualties in south Lebanon and the need for Israel to exercise more restraint. Mr Blair and Margaret Beckett are seen as having failed to carve out a distinctive enough line.

Moreover, many senior British officials argue that the current Israeli attacks will not achieve their aim of containing Hezbollah, and may have the opposite result.

So, Mr Blair’s options have narrowed. His public closeness to Mr Bush is a growing liability at home, while he appears to have little influence over the American approach, let alone over what is happening in the US. It is going to be a tricky meeting.

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