By Nick Assinder BBC News Online political correspondent

So, in true Thatcherite style, Tony Blair has "taken control" of the firefighters' dispute.

Also in true Thatcherite style, he has told the Fire Brigades Union there is no way he will allow them to win this battle.

And, just for good measure, he has made it crystal clear he believes there are elements in the union that are using the dispute for political motives.

Prescott blamed for chaos

But it wouldn't be the government they defeated if he gave in to their demands, he told them, it would be the country. Ring any bells?

As the government's handling of the strike careered into chaos, with Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott taking much of the blame, the prime minister stepped in to make the position clear. And he certainly did that.

Macho politics

The firefighters can have 4%. But anything over that will have to be paid for exclusively from modernisation and efficiency savings.

All talk of other figures - 11% or 16% - were brushed aside in favour of that simple, uncompromising message.

From a man who kept insisting he was not engaging in macho politics, it was a significant hardening of the line.

It suggested no compromise was available and that the firefighters now had only one option - to accept the 4% and make some concrete pledges to change their working practices.

Then, and only then, the government would see.

The comments did nothing to calm the increasingly bitter atmosphere surrounding the dispute.

Blair talked tough

There are those in the union movement who believe the government is determined to crush them as part of the wider campaign to finally end the historical - now largely symbolic - link between Labour and the union movement.

And there are those in Downing Street who are advising the prime minister to do precisely that.

Not on

Mr Blair insists that is not his aim. This is not going to be his miners' strike, he suggests - dropping the Thatcherite cloak.

But - within almost the same breath as insisting the firefighters were too sensible to think they could return to 1979 and the winter of discontent, or 1984 and the miners' strike - he repeated his message that "industrial militancy to pursue political ends is not on".

He refused to give the TV cameras a clip of him actually using the word "Scargillite" but he has used that description - amongst other more colourful ones - away from the cameras.

And everyone knows exactly what he means.

This is all part of the negotiations, of course. And it is still quite likely that, with a bit of movement by the firefighters on modernisation, there is room for manoeuvre by the government.

When pensioners erupted in fury at their 75p rise, it was increased.

And when fuel protesters took on the government - and despite what the prime minister claimed during his press conference - they eventually got concessions from Chancellor Gordon Brown.

So there is probably some cause for optimism there for the firefighters.

One possible way forward seems to be on transitional funding for any savings made through modernisation.

Those savings may take some time to filter through into hard cash and it may be that the government could fill the gap to allow an immediate pay rise.

But it is up to the FBU to identify those modernisations and savings first.

More widely, the prime minister's intervention has certainly cleared the air. It is hard for the union now to say they don't know where the government stands.

And Mr Blair clearly believes the ball is now in their court.