End of term report

It is little more than six weeks since Tony Blair received a stream of adulatory tributes on his 50th birthday. The Iraq war was won, with fewer casualties than expected. As jails and mass graves opened, powerful testimony to the evil of the defeated regime was revealed.

Now, as Parliament leaves for its summer recess, the mood has soured. The charge against Mr Blair, that he shored up support for war by using intelligence evidence on weapons of mass destruction that so far appears to have exaggerated the threat involved, is a weighty one.

It may one day pale into insignificance if greater stability is achieved in Iraq. But for now, the accusation has left a bad taste in the mouth for far too many MPs, constituency activists and the public. His messianic fervour exasperates some critics.

That frustration will not be eased by his speech on Capitol Hill in which he invited history to be his judge. Voters in Britain would prefer it if his mind was focused on the here and now. It is perhaps fitting that a party leader chosen for his charm and apparent sincerity should now make many feel that he is too quick to tell people what he thinks they want to hear.

But it is far too early to conclude that the damage to his trustworthiness is fatal. Mr Blair is still the first man ever to have brought Labour a second term with a big majority, and could deliver it a third term. No-one currently expects the Conservatives to win the next election.

At a point when most governments are well into the mid-term blues, lagging far behind the Opposition, Mr Blair is at worst level-pegging in the polls. The middle classes who trusted him to resist the Left have seen him subdue the firefighters' union and - so far - survive backbench disquiet over foundation hospitals.

Of course Mr Blair has not yet delivered convincing improvement in the NHS or in secondary schools, while university tuition fees will be hard to sell to the middle classes and backbenchers alike. And, as the botched reshuffle showed, the ranks of Blairite loyalists are thinning, now that Alan Milburn has left the Cabinet and Derry Irvine has been ejected.

Mr Blair's position is not as doomed as some of his opponents would like to wish. But he must now hold his nerve in domestic battles and he must not lose touch with middle class voters. They are the people who put him into Number 10 and they are the ones who can keep him there.