IF ONLY life were more like the movies, Tony Blair could have gone to the White House and given us a monumental feel-good moment.

A couple of verbal slaps around President Bush’s chops, a finger wagged in his host’s face, the unzipping of the poodle costume, and with one bound he would be free.

Mr Blair would return a hero. His name would ring out from the thronged streets of foreign capitals. Labour Party members would stop throwing darts at his picture, for a few minutes. He might not stop the war. But at least he would make us feel much better.

Such a scenario — downtrodden Prime Minister finally sticks it to arrogant and overbearing President — formed the climax to the film Love Actually. Hugh Grant, the Prime Minister, even got his girl.

So alluring is the Love Actually scenario that the Tories are beginning to lecture the White House. But this is real life and this is Tony Blair.

Mr Blair’s visits to the White House tend to be portrayed as his biggest political test since the last time he broke bread with Mr Bush. There is little evidence he regards them as such. Where’s the test in standing next to someone whose world view you share and are able to articulate slightly better? That said, both men conceded the gravity of the situation. Nodding to the domestic criticism of Mr Blair’s relationship with him, Mr Bush said in his introduction: “You tell me what you think.”

Apart from a joke about rogue microphones, this was a formal occasion. There was no “Yo, Blair!”, and little of the customary “Tony”. Mr Blair, deliberately, tried to avoid any mentions of “George”.

Mr Blair was able to put some rhetorical distance between himself and Mr Bush.He made a better fist of expressing himself about the loss of life in Lebanon and Israel. What was happening was a “complete tragedy”, a “catastrophe”. He was at pains to insist that his caution about a hasty ceasefire did not mean he had shed all human feelings. “Of course” he was appalled by the loss of innocent life. “We want it to stop and we want it to stop now.”

Mr Bush said that the suffering was terrible, but terrorists and terrorist-supporting states were to blame.

As so often when these two meet, the political and presentational skills may be different, but the message was united, and film-fans will have to wait for Love Actually II.

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