Bringing the House down: an unfamiliar Blairite experience

Whatever his troubles at home, it's a measure of Tony Blair's pulling power in Washington that two hours before he addressed the two houses of Congress, Fox TV was slugging its news coverage with the single line: "Tony's In Town''. By the time he had arrived to meet the House Speaker, Dennis Hastert, it was "Blair on the Hill''. Yes, the show was made just a little less exciting because he did not receive his Congressional medal. But he brought the house down with his one reference to the medal - pointing out that George Washington won his for triumphing over the British and that he had just been shown the very place where the British started the fire that burnt down the Library of Congress in 1814. "It's kind of late," he told a delighted Congress, "but, sorry." The Senators and Congressmen just loved it.

But then this was a bi-partisan audience which the British Prime Minister did not exactly find hard to please. They were all there; Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton, in a bright salmon pink trouser suit, among the Democrats, Vice-President Dick Cheney behind Mr Blair, and the troika of Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and the Attorney General, John Ashcroft, in the front row.

The standing ovation could hardly have been warmer. There were cheers and even whistles of appreciation; it was, as he remarked with masterly understatement "more than I'm used to, frankly". And that brought them to their feet again: Cherie Blair sitting next to Mr Cheney's wife Lynn, clapping with the best of them. This was an audience of serial ovators, caught up in the excitement even a group of Tories - among them Michael Howard, the Shadow Chancellor on a visiting parliamentary delegation. He felt obliged to join in.

Mr Blair brought them to their feet when he told the military power alone would not defeat terrorism because: "Our ultimate weapon is not our guns but our beliefs.'' And they rose again, only just a little less rapidly, when he told them in a stirring call to multilateralism.

It was the most eloquent and skilfully crafted he has made since the war in Iraq. For while he carved a characteristic third way between some pointed side swipes at the anti-Americanism still prevalent in parts of Old Europe, at the core of his speech was a clear message, - however sugar-coated - that the US could not act unilaterally if it was serious (as he made clear it should be) about using its power to spread peace and democracy through the world. Nothing must compromise Israel's security, he said. But only a just settlement would stop the terrorist poison which was "incubated'' by the conflict.

Lord Howe is the author of the wise aphorism that nothing goes more disastrously to the heads of British Prime Ministers than a standing ovation from the two Houses of the US Congress. But it must feel good when it happens. However short-lived, political rushes don't come much better than this.