Behold, again, Britain's Christian Soldier. But which way will he jump this time? Will he, perhaps fatally, confirm his portrayal as American poodle? Or will he see action against Iraq the next outreach in his quest for a new world order? Frank Millar writes.
Tony Blair, as has been said before, is a peculiar sort of control freak. In so many ways he personifies the restless determination of his government and party to control every headline, quell all dissent, yet he also takes risks with the power he patently enjoys. He devolves to Scotland and Wales and sees his party - hegemony broken - forced into coalition with the Liberal Democrats. He insists London must have an elected Mayor and sees Ken Livingstone steal the prize from New Labour: the result, a festering wound.
Likewise, in his appointment of the charismatic Dr Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury, we again see evidence that "President" Blair also likes to live dangerously. This potentially turbulent priest has wasted no time signalling his belief that a war against Iraq would be immoral and illegal and his unwillingness to support it without a fresh mandate from the United Nations.
While conceding it would be desirable to have UN support, some commentators observe that the Security Council has in the past shown itself an unreliable guarantor against evil. As William Shawcross reminds us, NATO's 1999 defence of Muslims in Kosovo proceeded without UN authority because Russia and China would have objected.
Other non-believers (at least in Dr Williams or the United Nations) instantly questioned how a decision of the Security Council could render the immoral suddenly moral - in the process mocking an Archbishop-designate seemingly in search of moral guidance from the higher authority of the United Nations. But the mockers will not be found among the gathering army of Labour MPs openly proclaiming their deep and growing unease about the prospect of British support for an American-led assault on Saddam Hussein.
They will thrill to the prospect of a moral and intellectual tussle between the preachy Mr Blair and a man soon to be confirmed God's actual representative on earth, or at least to the Anglican communion and they will particularly welcome the Archbishop-designate's intervention as confirmation that, on this occasion, Mr Blair's presumed war plans are not simply opposed by "the usual suspects" .
Veteran Labour MP and "Father" of the House of Commons Tam Dalyell this week warned that action against Iraq could mean a British commitment to maintain an armed presence in the region for decades.
He will have been gratified to find senior American politicians likewise demanding to know - what next? Will 50,000, 100,000 or 250,000 troops be committed simply to remove one murderous tyrant leaving another to take his place? Or will President Bush (prompted by Mr Blair, as with Afghanistan) promise this time not to "walk away"?
If American politicians are less worried about the provenance, morality or even legality of the President's determination to force "regime change" in Iraq, there looms before some of them again the spectre of another Vietnam. As King Abdullah of Jordan flew from London to Washington, doubters in both capitals echoed his warning that the first priority should be to resolve the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians and that the (present) absence of a firm international coalition should be a serious check on the plans of US Defence Department hawks.
Underlying all of this, from the opinion pages of the Guardian to the Senate floor in Washington, is the fear articulated by Senator Joseph Biden that the Bush doctrine of "pre-emption" might just trigger what the President seeks to prevent - Saddam's "last resort to weapons of mass destruction" in the knowledge or fear he has nothing left to lose.
These are powerful arguments. However, they are not yet joined. Downing Street may be truthful in asserting that Britain is not yet at the point of decision but Mr Blair's characteristic evasion about UN authority and the form of consultation with his own parliament feeds the belief the decision is made in principle.
If it is, then we can expect Mr Blair to return from his holidays and start to do what his critics demand - namely to make the case and spell out his belief, if such it is, that what he has regarded as a "counsel of paralysis" from the Left is ultimately a counsel of defeat.
As they circled him, even in the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks on September 11th, Blair defied his critics, telling his party conference: "Whatever the dangers of the action we take, the dangers of inaction are far, far greater." If he concludes the same is true in respect of Saddam Hussein and his development of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, then we can probably conclude that this deeply religious Prime Minister will not quail before the weight of Canterbury.
Sceptics scoff at talk of moral purpose as the driving force of an Anglo-American alliance rooted in the shared experiences of the second World War - and see instead a British establishment cravenly dependent on Washington might and know-how. But if it is true, as one American expert put it this week, that the president is "a man of deep religious conviction and purpose . . . actually more Ronald Reagan than George Bush the First", he would have to concede that Blair, too - for good or ill - has shown himself a man compelled by a highly developed personal moral code.
It is early days, of course, and much may yet go wrong for Donald Rumsfeld and his Pentagon planners, but I suspect Britain's two most prominent "Gods" are about to have an almighty falling out.