But lower-skilled migrants, mainly from other E.U. countries, will not be able to bring their families, will be barred from claiming welfare benefits and will be expected to leave after five years. Those from “higher-risk countries” will be required to deposit an unspecified financial bond — which they will forfeit if they fail to return home.

Clarke received praise and criticism from M.P.’s when he explained the proposals to the House of Commons. Left-wing Labor M.P.’s, some Liberal Democrats and nationalists accused the home secretary of entering a “bidding war” with the Conservatives over asylum and urged Clarke to be more positive about the benefits of immigration.

When Tory spokesman David Davis accused Clarke of responding too late to remedy a “confused, weak and chaotic” Labor policy since 1997, including 250,000 failed asylum seekers who had not been removed, Clarke said the Tory quota scheme would damage the economy and weaken human rights. He called it “Stalinist.”

Tony Blair, whose spokesman denied suggestions that No. 10 had pushed Clarke further down a hard-line road than the Home Office intended to go, gave his full support in a foreword to the five-year plan. Though Blair stressed the importance of managed migration — “essential for our continued prosperity” for centuries past — he put “rooting out abuse” at the top of his priorities and warned that cheating could be used increasingly “by extremists to promote their perverted view of race.”

Clarke said the points system would soon replace work and student permits. It would be simpler and more effective for those wishing to work in Britain, focusing on the “highly skilled migrants that can help us build our economy.”

The quota-based schemes for the low-skilled in agriculture, food processing, and the hotel and restaurant industries will be phased out “in the light of the additional labor now available from the new E.U. countries.” Last year 17,000 people from developing countries outside the E.U. came to Britain to work under such schemes.

The new regime will be accompanied by 2,000-pound, on-the-spot fines on employers who use illegal labor.

In an extra twist Monday night, the immigration minister, Des Browne, announced that immigration fees are doubling to between 300 and 500 pounds to raise 170 million pounds a year to make the migration program self-financing within three years.

Fresh pressure on ministers is expected Tuesday in a report from the Commons public accounts committee that criticized the handling of asylum cases and urged better procedures for fast-tracking them. Only 9 percent are fast-tracked in Britain, compared with 40 percent in the Netherlands.

The five-year plan heralds moves to step up the removal of failed asylum seekers, including more widespread use of detention and the introduction of tagging of asylum claimants. And the right to permanent settlement after five years in Britain will end for those granted refugee status. Their position will be reviewed after they have been in the country for five years.

The Refugee Council and the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants questioned how the measure would enable them to develop a commitment to British society.

But 24 hours after David Blunkett, the law’s sponsor, was forced to resign as home secretary, Downing Street and the new home secretary, Charles Clarke, decided to tough it out. They said they would study the judgment, but made it plain they are more likely to renew the controversial laws than modify them. Lord Hoffmann ruled that there is no “state of public emergency threatening the life of the nation” — the only basis on which Britain is entitled to exercise its opt-out from Article 5 of the European Convention, the right to liberty. It was the anti-terror laws introduced by Blunkett that posed a threat, he declared. “The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these.”

The judgment adds to the clutch of election-sensitive law-and-order problems in Clarke’s in box. No. 10 signaled it is “clearly minded to renew it,” and Clarke chose to stress continuity with Blunkett’s policies.

On Channel 4 News Hazel Blears, the police minister, said judges who authorized detentions had seen intelligence data that the law lords did not. “This is a matter for Parliament to decide” in line with the European Convention. “Our overriding concern is the protection of this nation.”

Sixteen Muslims have been detained under the anti-terror legislation, with 10 still held in Belmarsh, southeast London, and Woodhill, Bucks, and one in Broadmoor mental hospital. They are certified as “suspected international terrorists.”

The law lords’ ruling said the state should decide whether a state of emergency existed. But they argued that the government’s response breached the human rights convention because it went further than required. It was a disproportionate interference with liberty and equality and unlawfully discriminated against foreigners because British terror suspects thought to pose a similar risk cannot be locked up without charge or trial.

Lord Scott described the regime under which suspects can be detained indefinitely on the say-so of the home secretary with no right to know the grounds for detention as “the stuff of nightmares, associated with France before and during the revolution, with Soviet Russia in the Stalinist era, and now associated, as a result of Section 23 of the 2001 Act, with the United Kingdom.”

The judgment does not oblige the government to release the detainees immediately, but under the Human Rights Act the government must take steps soon to remedy the situation. These could include legislation — for example, making evidence obtained from telephone tapping admissible in a criminal court — that would make it easier to try detainees. Another option would be measures allowing them to be released under constant surveillance and monitoring.

Clarke is expected to produce new proposals in the new year, and until then the detainees will remain in Belmarsh and Woodhill prisons. Gareth Peirce, solicitor for eight detainees, commented: “The government has to take steps to withdraw the legislation and release the detainees.”

The judgment puts Clark under huge pressure to devise a solution or face the prospect of more embarrassing court defeats in the run-up to the general election. The detainees’ solicitors could take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, if the government drags its heels. Lawyers said another possibility was an application in the English courts for a declaration that it was unconstitutional for the home secretary to continue to detain the men in breach of a House of Lords ruling.

The case was heard by an almost unprecedented panel of nine law lords, instead of the usual five, because of its constitutional significance. The attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, who argued the case for the government, had tried to persuade the judges that they were “undemocratic” and should defer to the will of elected representatives.

Jeffrey Jowell, professor of public law at University College London, said: “It establishes that, even where the government claims national security is an issue, the court has authority to delineate the proper boundaries of a rights-based democracy.”

The French president’s words came in direct contradiction to Blair, who insisted Monday night that Europe needed to work with America and could help shape its policies. Blair used a keynote speech in the Guildhall in London to warn Europe to stop “ridiculing American arguments and parodying their political leadership” and to concentrate on persuading Washington that “terrorism won’t be beaten by toughness alone.”

But Chirac said Britain’s special relationship with the U.S. had brought few dividends. “When the divergence of views between France and Britain was at its height, when the English wanted to follow the Americans and we didn’t … I said to Tony Blair, your position should at least serve another purpose,” Chirac said. “You should obtain in exchange for it a new start for the peace process in the Middle East. Because that is vital. Well, Britain gave its support [on Iraq] — but I have not been impressed by the payback.”

The clash occurs two days before Chirac visits London to conclude months of celebrations to mark the centenary of the often-stormy Anglo-French entente cordiale.

Speaking coincidentally after the announced resignation of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell — his frequent U.S. ally in tactical battles for influence within the Bush administration — Blair urged both sides to stop behaving “arrogantly” toward each other. U.S. policy was evolving fast, he suggested, and Europe should seize its chance to help shape its policies.

Chirac said that profound differences between Paris and London over Iraq had not soured his relations with Blair. Asked if he would tell the prime minister that he had made a mistake in supporting the U.S., Chirac said he would not, “firstly because I am polite, and secondly because I do not think he did.”

He added in an interview with British correspondents at the Elysée Palace: “Blair took the position he thought he had to take in the interest of his country and his convictions. “The only problem we have ever had was over agriculture, not Iraq. On Iraq, I respect his position. On agriculture one day I got angry, and he did too. We said some disagreeable things to each other at the end of a summit. But we have never crossed words on Iraq.”

Chirac denied the meeting between the two leaders would be acrimonious. “When I go to Britain I go happy; I have no desire to argue,” he said. “I arrive, I ask after Leo, someone goes to get Leo, Leo starts saying ‘Bonjour Monsieur Chirac’ in French, I’m happy, and there we are.

“It’s very curious, this vision of permanent confrontation. I have no confrontation with the English in general, or with Blair in particular.” He described the Franco-British relationship as “built on competition, which implies mutual esteem … It’s a kind of violent love affair.”

By what was almost certainly a coincidence, his three chief cabinet lieutenants, Lord Heseltine, Lord Hurd and Kenneth Clarke, all weighed in during interviews yesterday, with the former deputy premier being the most forceful. “I think [Blair] has lied about the situation in the Middle East,” Lord Heseltine told ITV’s Jonathan Dimbleby program. “We were told that there was a threat. We were told there were weapons of mass destruction. There were no weapons of mass destruction; there was no threat.”

Lord Hurd, foreign secretary in 1991, was more cautious. “I don’t think he [Blair] deliberately lied, because I think he’s one of those people who deceived himself first. He persuaded himself that it was not necessary to ask all the awkward questions … It was simply necessary to take up and echo and repeat the arguments that President Bush was making,” he said.

Lord Hurd has long been an opponent of intervening in the internal affairs of failed states, saying honorable goals often result in “getting rid of a tyranny and replacing it with chaos, civil war and terrorism.”

Clarke, chancellor under Major, predicted disaster in Iraq before the war. On the same program yesterday, he joined Lord Heseltine in mocking this week’s U.K. deployment of 850 troops of the Black Watch into the U.S. zone as militarily ill-judged and politically motivated.

That is not a view shared by the current Tory defense spokesman and former cavalry officer, Nicholas Soames, who accepts it is a military decision, necessitated by the skills and armor at the regiment’s disposal and eagerly accepted. Evidence emerged Sunday that the British generals, keen to prove they can police rebellious areas more skillfully than the Americans, virtually volunteered themselves for the move into the Sunni triangle. It is their partners and families who have been distraught.

Labor officials were also quick to point out that three of Sunday’s Tory heavyweight critics are ardent pro-European proteges of the Edward Heath premiership — instinctive critics of the U.S. across a range of policies and presidents. Under Major they were closely associated with the failures of the European Union to prevent the slaughter of up to 250,000 people in the former Yugoslavia in the mid-’90s.

Major also shared George Bush Sr.’s reluctance to invade Iraq after the liberation of Kuwait — leaving the Kurds and Shiites who expected allied help to face Saddam Hussein’s vengeance.

Sunday Major said there could be no question but that Britain must “do the job properly and not scuttle” in Iraq, however long it took. “We are not near the beginning of the end,” he said.

Blair’s attempt to assuage party members over Iraq was combined with a bullish blueprint for a 21st century “opportunity society,” which won him a five-minute standing ovation from wary delegates. Blair boasted that Labor would deliver equality of choice to all. “Choice is not a Tory word,” he said.

The prime minister made clear his determination to drive Labor toward a third lease on political power, swatting aside the double interruption of pro-hunting and anti-Iraq protesters in the hall.

Unless Thursday’s Hartlepool by-election proves disastrous, the speech should give him political breathing space. But the prime minister’s justification for Iraq failed to impress his toughest critics, particularly after it emerged that he had watered down his language.

In the crucial passage, heard in attentive silence, he admitted that his prediction on weapons of mass destruction “has turned out to be wrong; I acknowledge and accept that.” But he insisted he could not apologize for removing Saddam Hussein from power. “The world is a better place with Saddam in prison,” he said.

Where his speech differed from past attempts to resolve the controversy came in the conversational way he voiced people’s fears that he was distracted from home affairs, “just pandering to George Bush,” or had made the world a more dangerous place. “Do I know I’m right? Judgments aren’t the same as facts. Instinct is not science. I’m like any other human being, as fallible and as capable of being wrong. I only know what I believe,” he said. There were ripples of applause from some.

Blair insisted there were only two ways of viewing the terrorist threat since 9/11, either as “isolated individual extremists” as have always existed or as “a wholly new phenomenon, worldwide global terrorism” based on a perversion of Islam — its Saudi roots deep in many countries. Those who took the first view would say of the terror in Iraq: “Look what you have stirred up; now stop provoking them.” Whereas his own view required the West to confront and remove this threat “root and branch.”

The main aim of the speech, as Downing Street gears up for a general election that may come as early as May 5 of next year was to flag 10 campaign themes centered on public services. Most of his themes were within striking distance of Gordon Brown’s vision of a “progressive consensus” in his speech on Monday. But the emphasis on choice — Blair used the word eight times — could yet cause tension between the chancellor and prime minister over Labor’s manifesto.

Last night cabinet allies and loyalists were confident that Labor’s big beasts would unite. “They must; there’s an election coming,” said one senior minister. Others praised another bravura Blair performance — more measured and less histrionic than usual — which combined acknowledgment of the “trust” problem with frequent echoes of Brown’s “progressive politics.”

The Conservative chairman, Liam Fox, accused Blair of being “out of touch” and said: “It’s all talk; we have heard it all before.” Labor strategists are confident he is wrong and that Blair’s rejection of Tory “ruling class” concepts — “the rulers are the people,” he declared — was well received.

Echoing Brown, Blair also argued that Labor’s fairness agenda — in health, schooling and beyond — is the best guard against extremism everywhere, including Britain. “The irony for me is that I, as a progressive politician, know that despite the opposition of so much of progressive politics to what I’ve done, the only lasting way to defeat terrorism is through progressive politics,” he said.

There was much else in Blair’s “third term mission to change Britain for good” that the watching chancellor could approve, including his pledge of more help for Africa and his insistence that Britain can only be effective if it is allied to the U.S. — “little will happen” without it — and at the center of an enlarged Europe.

Away from the ritualized cheers and the hugs from Cherie Blair, in the real conference arena, the leadership suffered a symbolic defeat yesterday: It was confirmed that delegates voted 60-40 in favor of rail renationalization.