What is more, the other side of frenzied adulation is usually an equally frenzied hatred. Tony Blair prefers to be liked by a lot of people rather than adored by some and hated by others. So where does the current blazing, passionate row over fox hunting fit into Mr Blair’s style of government?
Let us consider first his usual approach to controversial change The introduction of the minimum wage is a good example. The reform could have caused a huge row with hostile business leaders. Instead the CBI was brought on board and the change happened quietly, with the minimum of fuss. A similar pattern followed with the right-to-roam legislation, where angry landowners were incorporated into a process of change that originally they fiercely opposed.When the unexpected erupts, too, Mr Blair seeks to dampen the passions, to reach a consensus. From the beginning of the fuel dispute last September he tried to cool the political temperature.”We will do what we can to help them,” he told this newspaper at the height of the crisis.

There was much preposterous talk at the time of Mr Blair confronting the lorry drivers in the same way Mrs Thatcher took on the miners That was never Mr Blair’s instinct. He sought a compromise.But on fox hunting, Mr Blair has done the opposite of what he normally does He has roused the passions. In March there will be a massive demonstration in London against the proposed ban. In the meantime the newspapers are up in arms, and broadcasting studios vibrate with angry, hyperbolic debates. I chaired one yesterday on Radio 4’s Week in Westminster between John Gummer and Tony Banks For much of the time the two of them shouted simultaneously. With the Government’s cautious, incremental approach to reform it is impossible sometimes to get a discussion going. On fox hunting it is impossible to stop one.The answer to the question about where this all fits in to the Government’s style is instructively comical It does not fit in at all The whole damned thing has been a cock-up.

The sequence of events goes something along these lines.When Mr Blair appeared on BBC1’s Question Time in July 1999 he was exhausted The recent war in Kosovo had drained him. After that he had spent virtually an entire week in a room with politicians in Belfast, an experience that would finish most of us off. When he arrived at the BBC, fox hunting was the last thing on his mind. He had not been briefed on it either, the issue being the last topic on the mind of his advisers as well.Only at the last minute did the then editor of the programme, Charlie Courtauld, who now works for this newspaper, decide to include a question on whether Mr Blair was still committed to a ban Mr Courtauld has his place in history. If he had not added this question to the programme’s list, events would not have turned out as they have done.If Mr Blair had been more alert he would have politely swatted the question away. Without thinking, he repeated his own personal view that hunting should be banned, wrongly suggested that the Lords had blocked earlier attempts and then pledged that the Government would bring forward its own legislation at some unspecific point.The Home Secretary, Jack Straw, watching at home, nearly leapt out of his seat This was the first he had heard of it. When Mr Blair left the studio, I am told, he said to Alastair Campbell: “I haven’t set something going on this fox hunting business, have I?” The news bulletins were already leading on the story.Then came the next cock-up.