Mr Blair is talking bull. And he knows it

When I was doing my national service in the RAF, a warrant officer I was briefly in contact with used to announce: "Always remember, gentlemen, bullshit baffles brains." What he meant was that smartness, polish, what was called "swank" would invariably triumph over more mundane qualities. Needless to say, in my case his injunction – for it was less a piece of advice than a clear injunction – fell on stony ground. But the expression, much quoted in the services of that time, possessed a wider meaning: that bogus science or pretentious gobbledegook would convince people where other means had failed.

In this sense, the young Tony Blair would have been a cadet after the warrant officer's own heart. With him, bullshit does indeed baffle brains. I doubt whether more than half-a-dozen members, if that, understood the nature of the chemical weapons which Saddam Hussein was supposed to have at his disposal. The number did not include Mr Blair. This did not prevent him from trying to make our flesh creep. Death as a result of the unhappy ingestion of such substances could take many forms but was, we were given to understand, invariably inevitable, lingering and painful. The public prints, guided by the Ministry of Defence, have even come up with a ruthless woman scientist with British connections who is apparently behind the whole dastardly enterprise.

"I tell you, my old friend, we are dealing with some of the most desperate characters in Europe."

"Surely you mean the Middle East?"

"Kindly allow me or, rather, No 10 to write my own script. Were I striving for authenticity I should have to say 'in the Ottoman Empire', but I fear that such a reference would tax the historical knowledge of my audience."

Then there was the United States. Mr Blair told us that, after endless contemplation, herculean exertions of the mind and long struggles of the soul, he had at last come to the conclusion that the Anglo-American alliance was rather a good thing. Who would ever have believed this was what he thought? But it has been evident since he became Prime Minister and, indeed, leader of the Labour Party, when he decided to model his approach on that of Mr Bill Clinton.

In 1963 Charles de Gaulle refused to let this country into the Common Market because in any conflict we would inevitably side with the United States. Mr Blair has spent the last five years showing that De Gaulle was right. Most politicians, a notable example being Lord Jenkins, have spent their lives trying to pretend that the conflict does not exist. The only politician to have shown any honesty in this regard is Sir Edward Heath – apart, of course, from those other politicians who are suspicious of both Europe and America and who, while having much support in the country, have been unrepresented in government, apart from Tony Benn, Aneurin Bevan, Michael Foot and Enoch Powell.

Mr Blair has received much credit for bringing in the United Nations and so changing US policy. To begin with, this was that the UN was an organisation of the utmost insignificance to which the administration did not intend to pay the slightest attention. This may still be what will happen. But at least the motions are being gone through. I do not want to take away anything in this respect from Mr Blair's exertions, or those of his envoys in Washington and New York. Even so, it is worth pointing out that the Prime Minister's only hope of carrying his party with him was to introduce the UN at an early stage of the proceedings.

On Tuesday a Labour backbencher, Mr Barry Gardiner, who sits for Brent North, is PPS to Ms Beverley Hughes and had not, as the cricket writers put it, previously troubled the scorers, intervened to ask why an action which was right when taken under the auspices of the UN suddenly became wrong if taken independently. The answer, naturally, lies in the authority under which the action is taken.

But I speculated whether Mr Gardiner was engaged in a piece of freelance clever-dickery or had been put up to it by the Whips. Was this, I wondered, the Government's fallback position if the Security Council failed to agree on the appropriate resolution and Mr George Bush decided to press on regardless? I am told Mr Gardiner was not put up to it.

His question can be put the other way round. Does an action which is wrong suddenly become right if it is taken under the authority of the UN? I have never thought that organisation had been set up to be an absolute international monarch. But here Mr Blair has won the argument hands down by appealing to a piece of old Labour piety that goes back to 1945. UN good, no UN bad: that is what it amounts to, though Mr Blair refuses to say what he will do if by some unfortunate mischance the organisation fails to come up to scratch. Mr Charles Kennedy and Mr Menzies Campbell (who made Tuesday's best speech) both accept it. Even Mr Tam Dalyell accepted it in his predictably unsuccessful attempt to divide the House on a substantive motion to the effect that it refused to approve military action unless it was authorised both by the UN and by the House. Instead Mr Dalyell later divided the House on a motion for the adjournment.

The papers have given a slightly skewed account of the result. Almost 70 members refused to support the Government, of whom 56 were Labour MPs. There were notable absentees, including Mr Peter Kilfoyle, Mr Chris Smith and the Liberal Democrats, apart from three of them.

It was, by any standards, a substantial expression of dissent. Before and after, No 10 combined with the press to minimise the force of that expression by describing the motion as "technical", "procedural" or "obscure". Ms Martha Kearney on Newsnight even went so far as to admit, with what she clearly thought was a fetching giggle, that she did not properly understand the motion for the adjournment herself. What, Mr Jeremy Paxton should have asked her but gallantly refrained from asking, did she imagine she was being paid for by the rest of us? It is the greatest, the most historic motion that can be put to the House. It brought about the fall of Neville Chamberlain in 1940 and his replacement by Winston Churchill. In the 18th century, several administrations fell on the motion that candles should be brought in.

Part of the misunderstanding derived from ignorance, madam, pure ignorance. But part of it was also, I suspect, deliberate. It was designed to show that Mr Blair was under no real threat and that, however the House voted, it did not matter much. He may not be so lucky next time. There may still be limits to the persuasive powers of Mr Blair's bullshit.