LONDON, July 19 (AFP) - Following a battering last week over Britain's shaky intelligence ahead of the Iraq war, Prime Minister Tony Blair tried his best to return the focus to domestic issues Monday with a set-piece speech on crime.
Speaking in a run-down part of north London, Blair said he wanted to see "the end of the 1960s liberal consensus" about crime -- sentiments aimed squarely at Britain's middle-class heartland, which looks in grave danger of abandoning him.
The premier had a rough time last week, with an official report into pre-war intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) concluding Wednesday that the bulk of it was distinctly unreliable.
Blair -- who backed the US-led conflict almost entirely because of the supposed threat posed by Iraq's illegal weaponry -- then saw his ruling Labour party suffer badly in a pair of parliamentary by-elections the next day.
Defending what were previously rock-solid Labour seats, the party lost one to the anti-war Liberal Democrats and only clung onto the other by a handful of votes, adding weight to the impression that Iraq has helped make Blair an electoral liability.
Monday's crime initiative, launched by Blair despite it being the pet project of his hardline interior minister David Blunkett, was thus a welcome return for the prime minister to more reliable ground.
Under Blair, Labour has embraced a no-nonsense approach to crime previously associated with the main right-wing opposition Conservative party.
Later Monday, Blunkett was due to announce concrete plans including the introduction of satellite technology to track repeat offenders.
Blair's message was seemingly designed to meet jibes from tabloid newspapers that the 51-year-old prime minister is a product of the 1960s, and thus suffused with a wishy-washy liberalism that prevents him being tough towards criminals.
"People do not want a return to old prejudices and ugly discrimination, but they want rules, order and proper behaviour," Blair said.
The 1960s had heralded an era of "freedom without the responsibility", he charged.
"And a society of different lifestyles spawned a group of young people who were brought up without parental discipline, without proper role models and without any sense of responsibility to or for others," he warned.
Despite the tabloid-friendly message, any respite for Blair was likely to be very short-lived.
On Tuesday, he was due to face political opponents in parliament for a debate on Iraq which some pundits have identified as crucial for the prime minister's future.
The Conservatives heaped pressure on Blair over the weekend, with one of the party's spokesmen even saying that it was "dangerous" for the country to be led by someone the public now could no longer believe.
According to an opinion poll published in the Sunday Times newspaper, almost six out of 10 Britons would not trust Blair to lead Britain into another war following last week's intelligence report.
Almost half of those asked also said Blair would have taken the country to war irrespective of what the intelligence on Iraq's WMDs had been.