Mr Brown could yet spoil the war party

Hardly had Parliament risen for the recess when there was a chorus of demands for it to come back again. These demands were both predictable and virtuous – even if there was in some of them an element of attitude-striking, of asking a question fully expecting the answer No. They all came from members opposed to our involvement in a war with Iraq. In these circumstances, the cry for a recall was imprudent. For the House of Commons, in an inevitably whipped vote, would probably come down on the side of Mr Tony Blair and the war party.

This hypothetical calculation may to some be disappointing and even distasteful. But it is realistic all the same. Certainly well over half the parliamentary party are opposed to the war. Slightly under that number have signed the admirable Mrs Alice Mahon's motion condemning any action lacking the prior authority of the United Nations. But no one should confuse the expression of an opinion over a pint with the casting of a vote in the lobby. Still less should anybody conclude that a name on the order paper will reappear in the division list among those hostile to the Government – or not appear at all on account of abstention.

Signing a motion is one of the cheapest forms of protest. The Whips even encourage it as a harmless way of letting off steam. When the Vietnam war was going on, Labour members would happily put their names to a motion attacking some aspect of United States policy shortly before trotting off to vote obediently for Harold Wilson's support of LBJ, as he liked to call Lyndon Johnson to show the intimacy of his relationship with the President.

But Wilson never sent a single squaddie to Vietnam, despite Johnson's entreaties to do so. He never did what Mr Blair is now contemplating, even if the Prime Minister's resolution seemed to be faltering last week, largely because of the finding of the focus-group king, Mr Philip Gould, that Mr George Bush junior was even more unpopular than the Tory party. That party would, however, be invaluable to Mr Blair in any Commons vote. It might, admittedly, abstain, on the well-tried principle of giving your opponents every opportunity to fight among themselves. But Mr Iain Duncan Smith would be reluctant to engage in such tactics.

Not only is he put out because Mr Blair has taken over the leadership of the patriotic party, a position which from time immemorial had been reserved for a Conservative. He also prides himself on his connections with US Republicans, a shifty crowd of characters and no mistake, from whom one would hesitate to buy a second-hand oil well. But neither Mr Duncan Smith nor, for that matter, Mr Blair appears to view Mr Bush and his colleagues in this unfavourable light.

Mr Duncan Smith's inclination would be to follow Mr Blair and support Mr Bush, only more so. Dissenters such as Mr John Gummer, Mr Douglas Hogg and Sir Peter Tapsell might abstain or, less probably, vote with Mr Tam Dalyell, Mr George Galloway, Mrs Mahon and those other few Labour members with the courage to oppose the Government. But the likely outcome would still be a House ostensibly united behind the Prime Minister and the war.

As we know, these matters are never simple. In May 1940 Neville Chamberlain won the vote (on a motion for the adjournment) over the conduct of the Norway campaign. He was done for by the number of abstentions from his own side. A few days later the minister who, as First Lord of the Admiralty, had been responsible for the campaign in question became Prime Minister. That was Winston Churchill. Then the call was not that the war was wrong but that it should be prosecuted more vigorously. Even so, it is possible that a vote on Iraq could lead to a similar outcome.

There are no prizes for naming the minister who would be to Mr Blair as Churchill was to Chamberlain. He is Mr Gordon Brown. But there would be a reversal of roles. Whereas Churchill was the leader of the war party, Mr Brown would come to the highest office as the author of peace and lover of concord – and, of course, of that now forgotten virtue, prudence, as well.

For only now are people getting into their noddles the truth about how much a war in Iraq would cost. The Vietnam war partly caused the great inflation of the 1970s owing to the US deficit incurred in the previous decade. The other principal cause of the inflation was the quadrupling of the oil price. Mr Bush looks as if, this year or next, he will neatly combine both causes and roll them into one, producing both an expensive war and a rise in the price of oil. It is no wonder if our Chancellor is worried.

But a Commons vote at this stage would probably do more to impede his ambitions than to further them. The absence of a parliamentary vote makes any vote at the TUC next month or, after that, at the Labour conference more crucial for Mr Blair. With a fortifying Commons vote behind him, he would be able not exactly to strut but, rather, to adopt a lofty, even a magisterial tone. He could and no doubt would declare that the representatives of the people had already spoken. Who were these assorted Bills and Berts to gainsay them?

He would not put the position in quite these terms. But this would be his meaning. Similarly with the party conference. Mr Blair likes to keep quiet about the unions' control of half the votes in that assembly; just as he does about their one-third share of the constituency that elects the party leader. But a preliminary vote in his support in Parliament would enable him to turn the war into a dispute between party and people. This is precisely the kind of question on which Mr Blair thrives.

Parliament cannot declare war, but nor can the Prime Minister on his own. It is an executive act of the Crown undertaken on the advice of its ministers, that is, of the whole Cabinet. Ms Clare Short will, I predict, arrive at the conclusion that the future wellbeing of millions of starving Africans depends on her continuing presence in Mr Blair's administration. The former minister Mr Chris Smith, who has emerged as the leading backbencher opposed to the war, tells his friends that Mr Robin Cook may resign if the conflict proceeds. Well, we shall see.

The only minister who matters is Mr Brown. It was another Chancellor, Harold Macmillan, who put an end to the Suez adventure by telling the Cabinet that the cash was running out. There is something else about Mr Brown that we should remember. Unlike Mr Blair, he has always kept his relations with the brothers from the branches in a good state of repair. That is another reason why next month's conferences are as important as they are.