LONDON: All credit to the BBC for its latest period drama. He Knew He Was Right makes an inspired choice, if only because the title sounds so completely contemporary. The sentence describes perfectly the man of our time: our prime minister Tony Blair.

It seems long ago that critics branded the PM as "phoney Tony". Now we know that he is a conviction politician - with no greater conviction than his faith in his own rightness. What he is right about is a secondary matter; indeed, the opinion itself can change by 180 degrees within a few days. The important thing is that he holds it. Once he does, it becomes true. He knows he is right.

This is why the other day's volte-face on the European referendum would have discomfited lesser politicians, but not Blair. He finds the change effortless. When he said, in October last year, that "There will not be a referendum" on the European constitution, because the changes in the document did not merit it, he knew he was right. And when he announced that there would, after all, be a national vote, he knew he was right again. There was consistency between the two positions: in both cases, Blair was certain of his own rectitude.

This was why the prime minister was only half-accurate when he told last autumn's Labour conference: "I've not got a reverse gear". Actually, he does have one and it works very well; it's just that, when he uses it, it does not feel like reverse. Blair believes he is pushing ever forward.

It amounts to an unusual knack - to deny reality and keep smiling - and it can be unnerving to watch. But Blair is not the only man to be so blessed. As in so much else, he shares this trick of the mind with his soulmate, President George Bush.

Friday's performance at the White House rose garden was a display of the technique so virtuosic, requiring such intellectual gymnastics, the pair should take their show on tour in a political Cirque du Soleil. They could call themselves the Duo of Doublethink.

Naturally, Bush went first with a rapid-fire series of statements that stand at almost surreal odds with the truth. "Iraq will be free, Iraq will be independent," he promised, just as soon as the "transfer of sovereignty" is complete on June 30. But look at the reality. On July 1 Iraq will still have up to 130,000 foreign troops on its soil as well as 14 "enduring" US military bases.

Every move of the new authority - consisting of individuals handpicked by the American pro-consul Paul Bremer and with no democratic mandate whatsoever - will be subject to the approval of a "US embassy" which will administer some $18.4 bn in reconstruction funds and be the largest such mission in the world.

Iraqi infrastructure, from the electricity grid to the courts, will be reshaped and run out of the embassy. Iraqi industry will be on sale to foreign ownership and the Iraqi military will still take its orders from the US commander. So June 30 will not be a handover of "sovereignty" at all, and Iraq will be neither "free" nor "independent", at least not according to any common-sense definition of those terms. Yet Bush and Blair continue to speak of the end of June as if it was Iraqi independence day.

And that's nothing compared with the rest of the Bush-Blair show. Behold the comedy of the president's declaration that "our coalition has no interest in occupation". Or the prime minister's insistence that no "outside" forces will be allowed to determine Iraq's future - as if the US and British armies are not outside forces doing precisely that. These are examples of doublethink to rival Bremer's exquisite remark to an American interviewer earlier this month that the Iraqi resistance is made up of people who "think that power in Iraq should come out of the barrel of a gun. That's intolerable and we will deal with it". (Where does the coalition's power flow from, if not the barrel of a gun?)

Perhaps the problem is one of self-awareness. Maybe Bush, Blair and Bremer do not see that they are heading a US and British occupation of Iraq, and genuinely forget that they are outsiders ruling the country.

Or maybe there is a wider error here. For the doublethink spreads far. Witness Blair's assertion that "we have been involving the UN throughout" - when the one thing everyone knows about this war is that it was waged without the involvement or backing of the UN.

Or Blair's breezy reassurance that from now on "the UN will have a central role", as if he had not noticed that, one year ago, he stood beside Bush in Belfast and watch him repeatedly promise the UN a "vital role" which never came. Does the prime minister not see reality? Or does he think the rest of us won't notice?

Iraq is not the only Orwellian zone where black is white and day is night. With a straight face, Bush turned to the Israel- Palestine conflict and declared that "we're not going to prejudge the final status discussions" - even though not 48 hours earlier he had stood next to Ariel Sharon and done exactly that.

Bush had prejudged two aspects of any future negotiations, explaining that Israel would be allowed to keep key settlement blocs on the West Bank and bar Palestinian refugees from returning to homes in Israel. Both of these steps might indeed be part of an eventual negotiated settlement of the conflict, but Bush made up his mind in advance. "No one's prejudging those" matters declared Blair last Friday - except the man standing right next to him.

On and on they go, announcing that the Earth is flat. "This is not a unilateral attempt to impose a settlement," said Blair of the Bush-Sharon pact, when even he must know that the very reverse is true. But he says it anyway, with steady-eyed certainty. The roadmap is not dead; Iraq is free; the referendum is now good; and, as Orwell might have added, war is peace.

There will be some who believe this is not doublethink so much as plain dishonesty, that Blair and Bush know they are wrong, but aim to deceive. I am not so cynical: I suspect they have both, and Blair especially, created a moral universe with an internal logic of its own.

In this universe, London and Washington know what's best for Iraq and anyone who opposes them is therefore an enemy of Iraq - even if they are themselves Iraqi. If the people of Fallujah rise up in protest, then they must be killed, even in their hundreds, for they are acting against Iraq. To echo a former era, the coalition is bombing the city to save it - killing Iraqis to save them.

Others will have a crueller diagnosis. They will say that Blair and Bush may not be deceivers, but are losing their grip on reality. One interviewer asked as much of the prime minister at the weekend.

This too is probably an over-reaction. Blair might be neither a liar nor a lunatic, but simply a man unable to believe he can ever be wrong. This makes him resolute and strong, which are advantages in a leader.

But it also prevents him seeing the origin of past mistakes and therefore putting them right in the present or preventing their recurrence in the future. He knows he is right - and so continues to go wrong. -Dawn/The Guardian News Service.