Whether it was, as some headline writers insisted following the prime minister's direct intervention on Monday, Tony Blair's "Maggie moment", one thing was clear: however many wretched weeks on the picket line it may take its leaders to realise it, the Fire Brigades Union, thanks to its own pig-headed stupidity, is heading inexorably for humiliating defeat. As the dithering and confusion that characterised the government's handling of the dispute until Monday amply demonstrated, Mr Blair, unlike Mrs Thatcher with the miners, did not pick a fight with the firemen as an act of policy. With the threat of a terrorist outrage hanging over the country and the need to ready troops for possible war with Iraq without the distraction of providing a stand-in fire service, such a policy would have been reckless in the extreme.
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