Is the Prime Minister losing his grip, his political touch - or both?

Something odd appears to be happening to Tony Blair. He may be losing his grip on reality, his political touch – or both. It is hard to draw any other conclusion from his extraordinary claim that he was ready to resign if a few more Labour MPs had voted against him after the Commons debate just before the Iraq war. Had he done so, what, pray, would have happened next?

If Mr Blair had lost a vote of confidence, there would have been no alternative. He would have had to go and with him, the war policy. As it was, that policy received a resounding endorsement in the Commons, which gave the Prime Minister no choice. The Queen's Government had to be carried on; the PM had to see his war through. He was no more entitled to desert his post than any of the 40,000 British servicemen in the Iraq theatre were entitled to abandon theirs – and what would they have made of a Prime Minister jumping ship on the eve of combat?

A moment's thought exposes the nonsense, yet Tony Blair can look the camera in the eye and repeat it. It must be monstrous cynicism, surely? After all, it came at the beginning of a series of interviews and media events which will continue through the local elections and reach their climax with Mr Blair's 50th birthday. When the Downing St spinners build up to these occasions, truth is not a major concern. The Blairites also believe that it is hard to overestimate the credulity of the British people. They may shortly find, however, that things have changed and that the public is no longer as gullible as Alastair Campbell would like to think.

Then again, there are reports from No 10 that the PM is in a melodramatic mode. Britain may not be a hyperpower, but at times we do seem to have a hyper Prime Minister. Tony Blair is worried that his Government seems to be losing momentum on the economy, public services and the euro. He wants to use his own force of personality to get everything moving again, and when he tries to portray himself as the embattled war leader prepared to follow his convictions even at the cost of his career, that is not just manipulation. That is how he really sees himself.

In which case, he could be due for trouble. It may be that this master of the public mood can no longer connect with it. There is a lot of evidence, both anecdotal and from poll data, of increasing public scepticism. The voters are no longer interested in Blair the dreamer, or Blair the demagogue. What they want now is Blair the deliverer, Blair the master of detail. That gives the Prime Minister a problem, for he is neither.

There was a recent instance of the PM's inability to master the detail, as well as his recurrent tendency to believe that grand gestures are a substitute for groundwork. He invited President Bush to Belfast, on the assumption that the IRA was about to honour its commitments under the Good Friday Agreement, so that Ulster could return to devolved government. But the Provos refused to follow the script. That was not only malevolence on their part; it was also mismanagement on Tony Blair's. You do not bring presidents to Belfast unless everything is in order. Yet we are now in a situation where the Government cannot even decide whether to allow the Ulster Assembly elections to proceed in late May. Presidential visits are no substitute for preparation and policy.

It is not only in Ulster that the Government has been guilty of incompetence. Indeed, it is increasingly hard to find any government department which is not mired in the stuff. Charles Clarke has had one piece of luck, in that the Teachers' Unions stuck to their usual Easter routine and turned their conferences into a campaign to persuade more parents of the merits of independent schools. This enabled the Education Secretary to sound like a serious figure. But that is only a temporary benefit. It will not allow him to conceal the fact that the examination system is on the point of collapse, just like many school budgets. We have had several years of record levels of educational expenditure, for what?

All this helps to explain the Prime Minister's feeling of frustration. Unable to understand why his good intentions have not been transformed into reality, his instinct, as ever, is to take personal control. That will inevitably lead to conflict with another politician who is even more convinced of the merits of personal control, Gordon Brown.

For months, Tony Blair has been telling his friends that he intends to have his most sweeping reshuffle ever this summer, and that it will involve Mr Brown. He would move to the Foreign Office while Jack Straw would replace him at the Treasury. No Chancellor's removal from office has ever been so widely trailered.

That, however, may not be a sensible way to proceed, for it is based on the assumption that Gordon Brown will go quietly. Yet the Chancellor is a proud and prickly fellow who bears grudges for decades and sees slights even when none is intended. Is he a man to accept demotion stoically?

Moreover, there will be a problem with his replacement. Gordon Brown's reputation may not be what it was, but he is still a mighty, intellectually dominant figure. Although people may be increasingly doubtful of the end result, no one questions Mr Brown's ability to run the Treasury.

That could not be said of Jack Straw. At the Foreign Office, Mr Straw has often seemed content to be the spokesman, while the Prime Minister, Sir David Manning and other advisers make foreign policy. But it would be impossible to run the Treasury that way. The last time anyone tried to was in the early 1970s: the Heath/Barber era. It was a failure. There may be grumblings in the markets as to the way in which Gordon Brown is steering the ship, but wait until the ship is no longer being steered at all.

The PM may be ready to run these risks, so intent is he on steering his ship for Europe. Tony Blair has convinced himself that he is the only man who could persuade the British people to abandon the pound, and he is ready to subordinate almost everything else to that objective. That is why he is so determined to enhance his own aura and to make his Government even more presidential.

This is why he may find himself increasingly athwart the public mood. In his early, heroic days, he could virtually have persuaded the British people to walk on their hands rather than their feet. That was the time when he could have won a referendum on Europe. These days, however, he is increasingly seen as just another politician like all the rest: fallible, better on promises than on performance, and no addict of the truth.

He is determined to persuade everyone otherwise, and to recapture his early dramatic appeal. But that soufflé will not rise twice. Mr Blair is now in a situation in which his thespian gifts will not avail him, his conjurer's tricks will no longer enthral his audience. From now on, he will increasingly be judged on his actions, not his words.