The same people on the same day veer between the two paths - extreme caution or unaccustomed bravery. The cautious voices warn not to forget at our peril that this is a profoundly conservative country. Blair's doomy pollster and soothsayer Philip Gould kept warning for the last six months that wicked issues were bubbling to the top of his focus group cauldron. This panic scenario says appease the furies, soothe the savage Murdoch - and hope to do a little good by stealth. The T-word is no longer verboten.
Tax is good, tax cuts bad.
The great debate has begun - the one they never dared have before. Eighteen years of low-tax Tories devastated generations of undereducated children, left hospitals to rot, public squalor amid squalid wealth. At last it is the end of the politics of the impossible, the fantasy promises that everyone can have it all, all the time, at no cost. Failure to deliver the transparent nonsense of the proposition has helped create the cynicism Blair now sets out to fight - no longer the pristine parfit knight of 1997, but an older wiser man. No more walking on water but a tough ideological battle to win.