A second UN resolution is more important than a dissident minister

Almost for the first time, it isn't impossible to imagine Mr Blair choosing to resign instead of accepting what he sees as a shabby compromise

In a long-forgotten spat during the 2001 general election, Clare Short made some pretty sharp criticism on Any Questions of Tony Blair's launch of the campaign at a South London comprehensive. Two points stood out from this trivial incident. One was that she was right. The use of a prime ministerial visit to a school for party political purposes was, to put it at its mildest, poor judgement. But the second was that, right or not, it caused so little fuss.

It's unusual for a member of the Cabinet to criticise the Prime Minister, even on a matter of detail, during an election campaign. Yet even the Conservative-supporting press made little of it. Maybe the fact that the election result was a foregone conclusion had something to do with it. Even more relevant was the widespread wisdom that "Clare is Clare" and that she had an unofficial, if unique, licence to speak as she found.

Well, had is the operative word. For she is well out of "Clare is Clare" territory now. So exceptional was the interview she gave to BBC radio's Westminster Hour on Sunday evening, even by her standards, that it sounded more like the kind you give after you have resigned than when you are contemplating it. Arguing publicly against war without a UN resolution, while utterly unimpeachable from anyone other than a member of the Blair Cabinet, is breach enough. But she went considerably further.

She wants to stay in a job she is undoubtedly good at. It's hard on the face of to see how she now can do so for very long. So why now? It would be surprising if one or two deep in the recesses of Blairland –though certainly not Mr Blair himself – did not question who, in the murky world of low politics, Ms Short's intervention might benefit. And in that respect yesterday was an unsurprising day.

Which leaves the Cabinet ally she would most like to see succeed Tony Blair as Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. In sharp contrast to Ms Short, the Chancellor, who is by instinct about as un-anti-American as it's possible for a British politician to be, yesterday made an emphatic call on the party to rally behind Blair and his attempts to secure a second UN resolution. You don't have to subscribe to some fanciful conspiracy theory that he had the remotest idea she was going to do what she did to realise that, like Chancellor Macmillan after Suez in 1956, he could yet accede to the top job if a dangerous military adventure unravelled.

But not only is that piling hypothesis on hypothesis, it ignores both the seriousness of the international issues she discussed in her interview and the domestic ones that flow from it. The first of these domestic issues is whether she was right to press her deeply held – and widely shared – convictions in public while remaining in the Cabinet. The pointed contrast with Robin Cook is more than mere spin. For Cook is another potential resigner if British troops are committed to war without a second UN resolution – and as a former Foreign Secretary at least as dangerous. But he has chosen not to voice his anxieties in public, let alone to attack Mr Blair personally.

Instead he discussed them privately, and by all accounts, straightforwardly with Mr Blair last week. In repeated Cabinet discussions of Iraq, he has made clear the importance he attaches to a second UN resolution and to the need to give Hans Blix, still the most globally credible referee of Saddam Hussein's willingness to disarm, the room he seeks to do his job as he thinks fit. He has, in other words, adopted the sensible course of reserving his position until the outcome of the frenzied negotiations with the UN Security Council, and doing nothing in the meantime to undermine Mr Blair as he seeks to achieve one.

Which he is certainly now trying to do. Indeed this is one of those moments in the Iraq crisis when the US and Britain, while united in opposition to the French, are not playing quite the same tune. For all the rhetoric being not about time but about Saddam's willingness to disarm, it is now clear that the British did not want the final deadline for Saddam's compliance to be set as early as 17 March, and would still prefer it to be later in the month, particularly since the timetable for a vote in New York is now slipping towards the end of the week.

In London, both Number 10 and the Foreign Office are less optimistic from their own direct contacts than Washington that Chile and Mexico – particularly Chile – can be cajoled or bludgeoned into supporting the resolution in the time remaining. Chile's and Mexico's ties, not to say economic dependence, on the US ought to make Washington right about this.

But Turkey is pretty dependent on the US too, and the Americans weren't right about that, not least because they took it for granted that Turkey would say yes if the cheque was big enough. So London is trying to help both governments by designing wording that would set Saddam some high but not quite impossible tests by a deadline later this month. Have you destroyed all your al-Samoud missiles rather than just a sixth of them? Have you given us scientists we can interview in perfect security about what happened to all the weaponry left unaccounted for in 1998?

But then Mr Blair knows he needs the UN resolution much more than George Bush thinks he does. He also happens to want it, as he always has done, for all the right reasons – namely that it's essential that the US resists the pull towards unilateralism. And because he thinks a united UN front has always been the only way that Saddam might be persuaded to climb down. But his need, as opposed to his desire, is domestic. Without it his predicament remains intractable.

Those who – rightly – are horrified by a war without UN sanction – have to accept that there are no easy options for Mr Blair. If there is a majority for a resolution on the Security Council, and then France vetoes, but a US-British war palpably succeeds, he might just emerge a victor. But if there is no majority, he will have to go ahead with much, perhaps most, of his party against him, pull out with consequent loss of credibility, or just conceivably devise some third way of helping the US with bases and securing Iraqi borders without joining the combat. Almost for the first time, it isn't impossible to imagine him coming to the Commons to argue for war, losing the confidence of his own party, and choosing to resign instead of accepting what he might see as a shabby compromise.

Which brings us back to Ms Short. A lot of what she said on Sunday night made sense if ripped out of its political context "Reckless" is a strong word to use. But the risks are higher than either London or Washington usually admits. She is certainly right to argue that the UN should be in charge of post-Saddam Iraq. But it's hard if not impossible to defend her timing, or to see how her interview can be long compatible with membership of a Blair Cabinet. Maybe if the UN resolution falls into place, her disloyalty can be forgiven if not forgotten. More likely not. But then if it doesn't, Mr Blair will have more to worry about than the future of Clare Short.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk