British Applaud Blair's Actions After Death Of Princess Diana

LONDON - Other than perhaps Elton John, no one has emerged from the funeral rites for Diana, Princess of Wales, with a reputation more enhanced than Tony Blair, Britain's youthful prime minister.

His unerring feel for the British public's reaction to Diana's death, and his adroit coaxing of a reluctant royal family out of its isolation in Scotland, have reinforced the stunning election victory Blair led his Labor Party to three months ago.

Indeed, his swift and sure grasp of grass-roots British sentiment serves to ratify the judgment of the voters in choosing him. For few here can imagine Blair's uptight Tory predecessor, John Major, having identified so ardently with the outpouring of emotion for the princess.

By his actions, Blair has bonded with the British public emotionally in a way no mere election victory could guarantee.

His handling of the drama of Diana has made him the most dominant British leader in 15 years, with "the people behind him and the crown at his heel," as The Guardian put it Monday.

How he will employ that authority remains unclear. For the moment, Blair is preoccupied with the referendum on creating a separate parliament for a restive Scotland, the fulfillment of a Labor Party campaign pledge. In effect, this would be a step toward decentralizing government by transferring a number of domestic powers, including a limited form of taxation, down to the local level.

Further down the road lies the prickly issue of Britain's participation in the European Union, including its movement by 1999 to a controversial common currency. The issue has divided Britain and will be a troublesome, party-splitting issue for Blair, as it was for Major. He'll need the goodwill he has gathered for his role as Diana's champion - for as long as he can retain it.

But it will be Blair's success or failure in forcing the House of Windsor to modernize that could prove his sternest test. At the moment he has their attention - if only because he saved them last week from themselves.

In the first hours after the announcement of Diana's death, Blair was on television proclaiming her "the people's princess." And ignoring that the queen had stripped her former daughter-in-law of the title "Her Royal Highness" following her divorce from Prince Charles, Blair insisted that a public funeral, with all suitable regal trappings, was in order.

The Windsors were having none of it. Diana was no longer a member of the royal family, and a private service to be staged by her family, the Spencers, would be sufficient, was the word from Buckingham Palace. The Windsors had gone to Balmoral Castle in Scotland and were resolved to stay there until the funeral itself.

But Blair was having none of that. Operating through Prince Charles, Blair cautioned that in their seeming indifference to the country's grief, the Windsors were risking an irreparable rupture with their people. A public funeral, he persuaded them, was required.

As the week wore on, Blair pressed the Windsors as no previous prime minister has ever done.

The royals would have to come out of their hole in Scotland, he informed them. Diana's sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, must be seen by the public, mourning their mother and thanking her admirers. The queen must address the nation on television, acknowledging Diana. The funeral procession route must be lengthened to accommodate the crowds. The flag over Elizabeth's residence, Buckingham Palace, must fly at half-staff, protocol be damned.

The reluctance of the Windsors to comply isn't known, but comply they did.

It was clear from expressions of the ordinary man on the street and of the nation's press, highbrow as well as low, that Tony Blair had made off with the lion's share of the week's laurels.

"Much has been made of the Queen bowing her head when Diana's casket passed by her on Saturday," the Guardian noted, "but she had already bent her knee to Tony Blair."

And in the wake of Blair's luncheon meeting with the queen Sunday, it appears there will be even more changes, according to leaks from government sources. Staff changes are imminent, designed apparently to break up the circle of courtiers who have walled off the Windsors from public feelings and perceptions.

Under pressure from Blair, the current lord chamberlain, a kind of chief of royal protocol, will be replaced by Lord Tom Camoys, who is described as "a modernizing influence" and someone who will "bring a fresher feel to questions of protocol and traditions."

The role of Prince Charles also will change, again at Blair's suggestion so that, as the government source put it, "there will be fewer functions behind the closed door and cast-iron gates of Buckingham Palace and more events where the public really become involved."

There are signs that as the mourning for Diana acquired crisis proportions and public distemper with the royals deepened, Blair and Charles developed something of a working agreement in Blair's bid to modernize the monarchy.

It's Charles, rather than the queen, who is expected to bear the bulk of the public burden.

As this week began, and the debate shifted to how best to memorialize Diana permanently, Blair shifted strategies - from privately pressuring the Windsors to publicly defending them and calling for a halt to the criticism.

"The royal family has been through a very hard time this week," he said, "and I think criticism of them is very unfair. It has been a tremendously difficult situation for them and they have coped in a way that is very much to their credit."

Almost everything Blair did in the matter of Diana has added to his political armor here. But it was his success in pulling the Windsors out of the dusty past and into the present that has endeared him most to Britain.