Mr Blair's domestic strategy has paid off – but for one major miscalculation

The polls suggest the types of people who belong to the Women's Institute are as opposed to war as large swaths of his own party

Michael Portillo has declared with an operatic flourish that Tony Blair is a changed man. On the BBC's Today programme earlier this week, Mr Portillo suggested that the Prime Minister had switched from being a cautious leader in the first term to a bold and principled one now. Mr Portillo said that he much preferred the new Mr Blair.

Several of Mr Blair's closest allies add to this sense of a Prime Minister metamorphosing in front of our eyes. They point to his speech at the Labour conference last autumn in which he famously proclaimed: "We are at our best when we are at our boldest." Mr Blair's allies and the newly impressed Mr Portillo refer in particular to the prime ministerial policy on Iraq, and extend their argument to the domestic agenda where recent controversial announcements have included the introduction of NHS foundation hospitals and top up fees for universities.

Here, broadly, is their dramatic contention: a leader who sought consensus before making a move on most issues, who examined focus groups and opinion polls before uttering a word, has become in recent months a risk-all, conviction politician.

This is a compelling narrative, but it is too compelling to be believable. Political leaders do not change suddenly. Why should they? Other human beings cannot lose one set of characteristics and acquire almost precisely the opposite set without pausing. So what follows is an alternative narrative on Mr Blair's march to the edge of a political cliff. This is not a column about the merits or dangers of war against Iraq. I have written many such columns and will no doubt write many more.

In my view, the caricature outlined by Mr Portillo – Old Caution/New Boldness – does not stand up for two reasons. Partly because Mr Blair was not thatcautious in the past. In Kosovo and Northern Ireland he showed considerable personal and political courage. More widely, those who have detected a new radical boldness in Mr Blair's recent approach to the domestic agenda were making precisely the same claim in the first term. This includes Mr Blair himself, who in one interview in 1999 described himself, or the government, as "radical" 14 times. This tended to be the fashionable view in the early years. Admiring columnists hailed the radicalism without being able to quite put their finger on the policies to back up the claim.

In reality, the first term had its radical moments but Mr Blair seemed scared of acting in any way that would alienate those who he considered to be the most significant players in the big tent.

Has that greatly changed? Foundation hospitals and top up fees are portrayed as examples of a new boldness, but both are at a tentative stage. Only a few foundation hospitals are being introduced initially and no students will be repaying top up fees until the end of the decade. On some of the other big domestic issues, Mr Blair is still candidly cautious. Last year he told the Liaison Committee of MPs that on three policy areas – pensions, transport and housing – it would only be possible to take radical decisions with bi-partisan support. In fact his Government has been fairly bold on housing, but transport and pensions remain a shambles partly because of Mr Blair's reluctance to take unpopular short-term decisions. He is still the cautious Prime Minister of the first term – unwilling, to take one example, to give a view on whether congestion charging for London is good or bad.

So how does Iraq fit into this? First of all, I accept Mr Blair fully when he says he is acting in this way because he believes it is "the right thing to do". His support for military action is entirely in line with his approach to comparable issues in his first term and with his party conference speech in 2001, when he outlined his support for a new liberal imperialism.

But Mr Blair has had a sense in other policy areas about what was the "right thing to do" and he has not always done it because of the risks involved. I have already cited transport, housing and pensions. Another example is his caution over the euro, a project he viewed with private enthusiasm until, perhaps, the last few weeks. In the case of Iraq his sincerely held convictions coincided in my view with another calculation, that his course would be broadly popular, or the least unpopular of the options available to him.

After the election of President George Bush, Mr Blair confided to his senior allies that he was determined not to allow the Conservatives and right-wing newspapers to jeopardise the "special relationship". He was going to prove that a Labour Prime Minister could have close ties with the US even when the President was a right-wing Republican. This was an essentially defensive calculation, rather than a bold one.

Early last year, when he knew President Bush was planning a war against Iraq, I suspect he calculated that underlining Britain's close relationship with the US would command more support than the only alternative course available to him – working more closely with European colleagues and establishing a slight distance with the US over Iraq. By supporting the US he knew he would have a problem with parts of the Labour party, but Mr Blair is never happier than when hectoring a small section of his own side. In other words, of the two paths available he chose the one that was theoretically less painful.

To some extent, on these terms Mr Blair's strategy has paid off. It is a myth that he is isolated. In some ways he is positioned now where he often was during the first term. He has the public support of Rupert Murdoch; Margaret Thatcher has been singing his praises; the Americans love him as much as they used to adore Mrs Thatcher; The Daily Telegraph is on board and he has neutered the Conservatives who can do little more than sing his praises, as Mr Portillo did. This is not a coalition of support that embarrasses Mr Blair. He has often sought it in the past.

As far as I can tell, he has made a single strategic miscalculation. I do not believe he foresaw the scale of the opposition away from Westminster and the headquarters of national newspapers. He expected to take on parts of his own party and would have been more than comfortable at the prospect. Publicly, he has looked deeply troubled only once, and that was when leading members of the Women's Institute (WI) famously jeered him in 1996. Here was part of his coalition that he did not want to berate in public. His problem now is that the polls suggest that the types of people in the WI are as opposed to war as large swaths of his own party.

This might change if Hans Blix files a report tomorrow that is critical of Saddam and there is a second UN resolution. But I do not believe Mr Blair calculated that his "boldness" would go this far; that it would pose a threat to his own career and arguably the future of his government. There is no going back now. A leader who likes to keep his options open has no choice but to be "bold" and to keep his fingers crossed.

s.richards@independent.co.uk