At his new monthly press conferences, Tony Blair turns out a fine tour de force. He lays himself open to all questions, from footling local crime to great global issues. He looks unafraid, his manner warm and convincing. With elegant deftness he turns aside questions he does not want to answer. He plays off the hopeless vanity of the big cheeses among the lobby who vaunt their own questions instead of following up one after another to hammer home a previous point and dig deeper. He is master of this medium, knowing that one man exposed to a pack of hounds in public will always have the PR advantage. It is the fidgety press, not he, who winds up proceedings, bored after an hour or so, while he professes himself willing to stay and chat indefinitely. "Doesn't he do it well!" the journos say to one another between gritted teeth as they file out, feeling somehow cheated.  This week's press conference was billed as the one where the butterfly would wriggle on the pin. The cabinet is against war, the party does not want it and only 53% of the public would support it even if there is full UN approval on a second resolution. Yet the Blair butterfly flapped its wings and escaped again.  The effect doesn't last long. By the time the flotilla of hacks have reached the Downing Street gates, comparing notes as they go, they find there is nothing much there, another Chinese meal of a conference, hungry for more before they reach Whitehall. Then they realise the grounds for war have just shifted yet again. Last time it was because Saddam Hussein is a danger to his neighbours, has started four wars and must be stopped from launching a nuclear attack. But that line has worn thin: people see how containment works fairly well, with US bombing raids every week and no-fly enforcement. Dangerous materials may have slipped past sanctions - yet Iraq just does not look more threatening than North Korea. The real weapons of mass destruction are the hearts and minds of boys pouring out of madrassahs in our good friend Pakistan.  So now the Blair argument has shifted. This week the clear and present danger is not Saddam starting another war but the danger of his weapons sold to the madrassah boys. Blair is rightly frightened about terror to come, but the missing link in his argument is this: wouldn't an attack on Iraq make such terror more - not less - likely? Dangerous materials are already loose on the global market and war will inflame a terrorist rage which can only be assuaged eventually with peace and prosperity in the region.  There is no doubting the prime minister's sincerity: after all, his policy costs him more political pain than gain. Alas, that does not make him right and his moral rhetoric begins to sound naive in the real world where post-war Iraqi oil contracts are being bartered among UN security council members as the price and maybe the cause of war. His own attempt at peace in Palestine is crushed under the contemptuous White House boot. His passion on world poverty is ignored on the other side of the Atlantic. Maybe if he were in the White House, he might be a great world leader. But he isn't. He has only a weak British hand to play and the only question to ask is has he maximised British influence for global good, or could he have done better with it? As the prime advocate of a joint European defence policy, he threw away the chance to bring Europe together and reconnect its citizens with a sense of purpose in the union. His global visions once seemed admirable - but now sadly misplaced in the hands of George Bush. If only the scope of his foreign dreams were matched in ambition by his visions at home.   Perhaps that can change, for yesterday Tony Blair hosted a rather different event in Downing Street. It marked 10 years since the launch of Renewal, a magazine that sprung from the ruins of the 1992 election disaster. It was the thinking furnace to fire up ideas for New Labour modernisers. Tony Blair heads the list of its editorial advisory board and there collected was a room packed with many of New Labour's big brains - the advisers, the party apparat, heads of the thinktanks, cabinet brains, policy wonks, the brightest and best, (and many of those whey-faced young men who seem never to have left the artificial light of political seminar rooms). It was billed as a seminal event and so in a way it was, less for any actual ideas produced - (though there were plenty) - than for the fact that the prime minister himself recognised a need for them.  Ten years ago New Labour began to shape its manifesto so that it came to power with a well-planned programme which has been carried out. Devolution, abolition of the hereditaries, a minimum wage, the New Deal, a million jobs, virtually full employment, tax credits, much more social security for children, child benefit, cash for poor pensioners, and a bigger increase than the NHS and schools ever saw before. But that was done or foreshadowed in the first term.   Tony Blair promised a great leap forward in the second term, yet there has been dangerously little sign of new thinking. Delivery may be some time coming and even then expectations will run ahead, demanding more. Slowly nudging up statistics is not enough to sustain a government's momentum. So what now? A senior figure yesterday confessed, "We're crap at politics," and that is an important admission. It was said in a slightly faux self-deprecatory way, implying they were far too busy delivering to worry about spin. But politics does matter. It is the vision thing, a beacon that explains what they are doing and why. It is what makes people believe in politics and politicians. It is where trust begins and respect for politics is engendered. Tony Blair's great political fault is his refusal to deliver a clarity of ideals. He avoids taking sides, giving nothing to his allies without taking with the other hand. He is always equivocal, so every time a public service is praised, praise for the private must follow.   The very word "modernise" which brought Renewal to birth is now a word damaged by daily abuse, a threat as often as a promise. Labour has evolved no new political vocabulary since then, a symptom of the lack of new political ideas for a political world changed out of recognition since 1993. This politics deficit is a curious phenomenon, for at heart Labour does not really lack ideals: it lacks the boldness to speak them out loud. The wish for social justice is there, but the vocabulary that might inspire others sticks in their throat.   This meeting signified that the prime minister sees the problem. After a few years in power, all leaders have a dangerous tendency to spend too much time on foreign policy - so much more intellectually challenging. Tony Blair enunciates his big ideas globally and perhaps too grandiosely. What he lacks is some big new ideas at home, for the clever plans devised for 1997 cannot sustain Labour through the next election. Time for renewal indeed.