Kamal Ahmed assesses the political fallout of Blair's declaration of faith in 'his Maker'

He has been described as messianic, a man who believes himself driven by a higher calling. And yesterday it was revealed that Tony Blair really does put God at the heart of his politics when he admitted in an interview that he will be judged on the Iraq war not only by the electorate and the pages of history but by 'my Maker'.

In a country where church and state are viewed as separate entities, his admission brought both praise and criticism. Matthew Parris, the political commentator and former Tory MP, said Blair was in danger of looking 'somewhat unhinged'. Graham Dale, head of the Christian Socialist Movement of which Blair is a member, said that revealing his genuine beliefs was a positive move for the PM.

But the laying bare of Blair's religious soul will cause consternation among his inner circle. Alastair Campbell, the PM's communications director and one of his closest confidantes, is known to be uncomfortable when Blair speaks about his religious beliefs. Other key officials also believe it 'plays badly' with the public.

Blair has always been cautious about speaking about his faith. He side-stepped questions from Sir David Frost last year and Jeremy Paxman earlier this year who both asked if he prayed with the American President when they met at war summits.

Katie Kay, who lived next door to Blair in Hackney in the 1980s and now works for him in Downing Street, revealed in The Observer last week that he regularly reads the Bible on holiday. He is also known to take an intense interest in other faiths, particularly Islam.

'There has always been an anxiousness,' Dale said when asked about Blair's public declarations on religion, 'particularly when you have had a lot of criticism of the fundamentalist tendencies of the Bush administration. The Prime Minister was anxious at the time of the war that this was not seen as a Christian crusade against Islam.'

Blair made his latest comments in an interview with the Times published yesterday. The death of anyone in war 'really gets to you', Blair told Sir Peter Stothard, the paper's former editor who spent 30 days travelling with the Prime Minister during the Iraq war. Blair said he was ready to 'meet my Maker' and answer for 'those who have died or have been horribly maimed as a result of my decisions'.

The Prime Minister said that those who believed in 'the same God' would understand that there was a final judgment for all Christians.

Stothard said: 'His faith, his deep sense that what he was doing was right and that he was prepared to justify it to anybody was what made him do it. I was completely convinced of the sincerity of it.'

Blair's religious beliefs have regularly put him in the firing line. He was criticised at the launch of Labour's election campaign in 2001 when he was pictured at a school before a stained glass window with a hymn book. Party officials insisted the launch was to promote education. Others were not convinced. 'The appearance of the Prime Minister standing shirt-sleeved with a hymn book in front of a cross and a stained-glass window made him look more like an American television evangelist than an educator,' Alexander Chancellor wrote in the Guardian.

He was also attacked when it was revealed he was taking Catholic communion despite being a member of the Church of England. Blair's wife, Cherie, is a committed Catholic and was instrumental in arranging the couple's private audience with the Pope shortly before the war.

Parris said in an interview with Radio 4's Today programme yesterday: 'He has an unhinged belief, firstly in the purity of his own intention, secondly in the fact that his own good intentions can only lead to good results, and thirdly that he's going to win people over, that he's going to persuade people.'

'Prime Ministers ought to take a cool view on the balance of calculations. There is this slightly unhinged optimism that comes from a belief in his own intentions.'

'Gladstone used to do this kind of thing. He called it rescue work. He went out into the streets of London and picked up loose women and brought them back and read them the New Testament and then whipped himself afterwards.'

'In one of Blair's long time past speeches at a conference, and I think with unconscious mimicry, he actually said that Labour activists who supported him should expect to be reviled in public and he went on in the language of "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and speak all manner of evil against you".'

'I think there is a belief that just by demonstrating his own goodness, just by demonstrating the purity of his intentions he will win or, even if he doesn't, he will have won in the eyes of his Maker.'

David Runciman, political scientist at Cambridge University, said it was always difficult when Prime Ministers were pushed to wear their religious beliefs on their sleeves.

'The obvious contrast between Tony Blair and William Gladstone, the Prime Minister to whom he is often compared, is that Blair does like to torture himself in public - Gladstone did this in private,' Runciman said.
 

Tony Blair was accused of caving in to evangelical Christians last night after it emerged that new government legislation will allow faith schools, churches, hospices and other religious employers to sack lesbian and gay staff.

Equal rights campaigners were furious when they discovered that regulations intended to combat discrimin- ation in the workplace contain wide-ranging exemptions for any employer "with an ethos based on religion or belief".

The Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement said that the move would institutionalise homophobia in a way that "makes Section 28 look like a tea party". Others claimed that the exemptions exposed the "dangerous" influence church groups have over the Prime Minister.

The 2003 Employment Equality Regulations were originally drafted by ministers with the aim of achieving a historic breakthrough in combating harassment and bias in the workplace on grounds of sexuality or religion.

Drawn up to comply with an EU directive on workers' rights, they were meant for the first time to give protection to Muslims and to gays. An employer found to discriminate when hiring, promoting, demoting or training staff would be in breach of the law.

But The Independent on Sunday has learned that the statutory instruments slipped out to Parliament last week were watered down following direct intervention by Downing Street. A Whitehall source said the decision was made "at the highest level" and that Barbara Roche, the equalities minister, had been overruled.

One key clause inserted into the regulations states that an exemption applies when an employer acts "so as to comply with the doctrines of the religion – or so as to avoid conflicting with the strongly held religious convictions of a significant number of the religion's followers".

The wording of the clause is almost identical to that submitted by the Church of England. The Archbishops' Council's submission, which was leaked to the IoS, states that an exemption should apply "to comply with the doctrines of the religion or avoid offending the religious susceptibilities of a significant number of its followers".

Other major changes to the original draft, allowing discrimination against atheists or others who do not share the religious beliefs of their employer, were made following strong lobbying from evangelical groups. One of the biggest loopholes allows an employer to dismiss or fail to hire an individual if he is "not satisfied" that they fit his own "ethos based on religion or belief".

Critics claim that this would allow firms such as Stagecoach, run by Scottish evangelist Brian Souter, or Vardy, the North-east car dealership owned by millionaire Christian Peter Vardy, to discriminate freely.

Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrats' equality spokesman, condemned the new regulations, pointing out that they would actually weaken current employment rights of gay men and lesbians by institutionalising in law justifications for discrimination.

"When faced with pressure from those who wish to continue to harass and discriminate against people on the basis of lawful private behaviour or their sexuality in circumstances where sexuality is patently irrelevant to their ability to do the job, the Government has simply caved in," he said.

Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society said the regulations were a "witch-hunter's dream come true". "Organisations with a 'religious ethos' employ around 200,000 people, most of them in jobs paid for out of the public purse. This includes over 100,000 teaching posts in faith schools," he said. "The Government has given in to religious pressure at every stage of this process."

The Deputy Prime Minister's Office said that religious employers were a special case "as they bring diversity to public life and delivery of services".

"We listened very carefully to responses in the last consultation and on reflection we decided it was right in very limited circumstances that the Government wouldn't interfere in matters of religious doctrine or strongly held religious convictions," said a spokeswoman.