An uneasy torpor has descended upon the House

In the past few months it has been suggested that numerous difficulties would be resolved if Mr Tony Blair became leader of the Conservative Party. There is a good deal to be said for this proposal. The Tories, after all, admire him. He is like those leaders of their party, bold and resolute, of whom they have vaguely heard but of whom they have no direct experience, many of them having entered the Commons after 1990.

Besides, they rather like him. This is more than most of Mr Blair's own party have ever done. These Labour persons are prepared to hang on to and even to safeguard him as the goose that lays the golden eggs in the form of huge majorities. It may be that this era is now passing and that we shall look back on 1997-2003 as an aberrant period. Perhaps we can expect a phase of instability comparable to the 1970s, with the Liberal Democrats playing a more prominent part than the Liberals played in that decade.

For the moment, however, those who think Mr Blair should head the Tories can produce the same effect in a simpler way. Instead, Mr Iain Duncan Smith can become Deputy Prime Minister, leaving Mr John Prescott free to run, or run down, some great department (it does not much matter which). Certainly Mr Duncan Smith seems admirably suited to this position. A few weeks ago, for instance, before the fighting in Iraq had begun, he appeared behind a podium in Downing Street, giving the nation the benefit, not of his views, but of Mr Blair's.

He had just emerged from one of those meetings "on privy council terms". Mr Charles Kennedy may have attended one too. Judging by his diminuendo, rather sad performance since the war started, he almost certainly has. These meetings rarely fail. Only our national newspaper editors are more impressed on those occasions when they are summoned en masse by Her Majesty, a form of control which now seems to have fallen into disuse.

Mr Duncan Smith had evidently been impressed by Mr Blair. Or perhaps it was the novelty of addressing the television cameras from outside No 10. Perhaps Mr Duncan Smith thought the opportunity would not recur, so he might as well make full use of it while he could. It is the same at Prime Minister's Questions. Mr Duncan Smith cannot be in Mr Blair's place, but he can at least show him some respect.

Last week a parliamentary sketchwriter wrote with every appearance of seriousness that Mr Duncan Smith had so far enjoyed "a good war". What he does is bowl a tennis ball underarm on the back lawn in the general direction of Mr Blair, who pats it back to Mr Duncan Smith. The process is then repeated till Mr Speaker Martin tells Mr Duncan Smith that he has used up his quota of lobs. It is time to give somebody else a go. Then they adjourn for lunch.

It does not seem to me that Mr Speaker is in any way to blame for the fog of uneasy torpor which has descended on the House. In the two debates about going to war, the last producing 139 Labour dissenters, he certainly gave those of all parties every opportunity to make their views known. My suspicion is that this balance was easier to achieve because real supporters of Mr Blair's position – for it was, as it remains, his own rather than the Government's position – were somewhat thin on the ground. They were surly loyalists, whether to Mr Blair or to Mr Duncan Smith, rather than shining enthusiasts.

What is incontestable is that Mr Speaker has behaved differently from Mr Speaker Thomas (later Lord Tonypandy) at the time of the Falklands War. As he admitted candidly in his autobiography, Thomas did not even try to be impartial. He saw it as his duty to be the lads' Speaker. Accordingly he did not call such members as Mr Tony Benn and Mr Tam Dalyell, then as now leading figures in the Peace Party.

But the leader of the opposition, Mr Michael Foot, was in the Peace Party too. Or, if he did not go as far as Mr Dalyell and Mr Benn, he was certainly prepared to give Margaret Thatcher a hard time at PMQs, which then took place twice a week. He attacked her for failing to have proper recourse to the United Nations and for ignoring the Peruvian Peace Plan.

Mr Foot had started off, in that Saturday debate almost exactly 21 years ago, denouncing Argentina and calling for the strongest response. When that duly occurred, he attacked the Conservative government. It had been the same story, more or less, 26 years previously. Hugh Gaitskell seemed to be supporting the use of force against Colonel Nasser for nationalising the Suez Canal but later attacked Anthony Eden, in some of the best speeches of his life, when the troops went ineffectually into Egypt.

The point is not whether either of these opposition leaders was inconsistent. It is, rather, that both of them showed no hesitation in attacking the government of the day even when British troops were in action. And, in 1956 as in 1982, they had more plausible reasons for fighting than they have today. Egypt had taken our property without compensation; Argentina had invaded our possessions; in Iraq, by contrast, we are waging a war of open aggression. It is a myth that in time of war Parliament shuts up shop for the duration. It was not so over the Falklands, Suez or Korea. It was manifestly not so in the Boer War. It was not so even in the Second World War, when Aneurin Bevan regularly attacked Winston Churchill.

Most of the executions following the Nuremberg trials of 1945 (punishments I disliked, as I do still) were carried out not for crimes against humanity but for waging aggressive war contrary to the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928. Mr Blair is, I fear, a war criminal too. So, through no fault of their own, are our brave boys – for the Nuremberg trials also established that obedience to orders was no defence – and Ms Rebekah Wade of The Sun can stuff that up her jumper.

But of these simple and obvious legal truths there is no reflection at all in either House, and only a blurred and indistinct one in our great newspapers, even in those which ostensibly oppose the war. Thus Mr Robin Cook writes an article demanding that our troops be brought home. He is – or, rather, was – exceptional in the Cabinet in being both lucid and literate. His resignation speech alone showed that. He must have meant what he wrote. But then, with nothing to lose, he goes back on his words like some heretic summoned before a Tudor religious tribunal who promptly recants, when all they wanted to do was have a quick word with him about the 2.30 at Towcester.

He is now replaced by Dr John Reid, the Government's official Mr Nasty, as distinct from its nominated Mr Nice, Mr Peter ("Permatan") Hain. God help us and the House of Commons too!