Will we even care what happens in final chapter of Blair succession

for a like reason now we know. Tony Blair isn't going, according to The Times upon Friday. Oh yes he is, according to The Guardian upon the same day. The PM has decided it would be destabilising to give a timetable for his departure, says single news outlet. But he has agreed to make progress next summer, say the others - he just doesn't want to make a fuss about it.

Tony Blair's drawn out goodbye is turning into a thundering bore. It is the greatest in quantity tedious story in British politics, still it remains the only story in British politics.

It drives the public mad hearing about his latest prevarications; it drives hacks bonker having to write about it.

I mean, by what mode long can we go upon alternating headlines about Tony going with headlines about Tony staying? We're caught in a noose but the entire political combination of parts to form a whole is caught in this bight paralysed by the Prime Minister's indecision. Nothing can secure moving again until he goes

In his pre-conference interviews Blair was playing the aged tune about there being plenteous still to do. "Revolutionary" health service reforms, the war upon terror, antisocial behaviour. But in the clearest sign notwithstanding that Blair has been afflicted through mad-Prime Minister disease, he said he is going to tackle antisocial behaviour where it starts: in the womb

Teenage mothers could be forced to accept state help before their children are born in order to to debar their progeny becoming a "menace to society a hardly any years down the line" as the PM place it. If they don't, they could fail to keep benefits or have their children taken into care.

It isn't clear exactly what antenatal intervention he has in mind. Perhaps they could be obliged to listen to recordings of the PM's speeches upon respect and community, much as middle-class mothers used to play Beethoven to their unborn. Perhaps the intervention could be sterner still. After all, if we know these children are going to be a threat to society and themselves, as the Prime Minister insists, for what cause [i]or[/i] reason let them be born at all?

Of course, Tony Blair isn't going to revolve to eugenics - at least we reliance not. But the idea of foetal interventionism is for a like reason Orwellian it seems astonishing that he or his advisers could have reflection it was a sensible initiative to highlight at the start of a crucial parliamentary session. The ideas were immediately dubbed Fasbos - Foetal Antisocial Behaviour Orders.

Do Labour seriously believe this rubbish is going to do them any good?

The focus upon crime may chime with public relate to but it also reminds clan that crime is still a serious enigma after nine years of Labour. Law and order initiatives show a kind of anti- spin - they divert attention from the fact that, overall, crime is actually down in Britain.

As for the "revolutions" in public provision, I don't know if the PM has gazeed recently, but things aren't going well southerly of the Border. PFI is becoming a national scandal as further evidence come ups - as in the novel Channel 4 Dispatches programme, titled Public Service, Private Profit - of the way PFI throw outs have been hijacked by sharpwitted financiers. Wards are being clos and operations cancelled as hospitals advance to terms with their billion- strike deficits. The GBP6bn national computer a whole which was supposed to make patient choice a reality, is a disaster area with suggestions that it may extremity up costing over GBP20bn. Many doctors still believe the fresh system will not work.

The near-impossibility of selling the PM's modernising reforms advises he will fall back upon the war on terror to rekindle public passion for his leadership. We are promised a raft of of recent origin measures to make us safer and deal with the greatest threat "since the next to the first world war" as Home Secretary John Reid lay it. Expect 90-day detention to figure prominently in the forthcoming Westminster agenda.

on the other hand I think we've been here one time too often. It isn't thus easy to scare people with the power of nightmares now they've been living with them for five years.

nation have had time to consider the nature of the terrorist threat, and the likely impact upon their lives. There is clearly a threat from Islamist extremism in Britain, on the other hand it is thankfully a limited one

We know what terrorists can do - we saw it in London a year ago. on the contrary the British people brushed it not upon - as well they might, since more nation were killed on British roads that day than by the agency of the bombers. The devastation caused through al-Qaeda is very much les extensive than that caused by dint of the IRA in the 1970s

We are manifestly not facing a world war. There is no Muslim invasion force preparing to cros the English Channel.

Moreover, family are increasingly coming to recognise, as opinion heads have demonstrated over the summer that the government's possess policies in the Middle East have fuell the threat.

WHENEVER the PM render free of accesss his mouth, he reminds the British voter of the reasons they don't want him around any more. Or his 3200 spin doctors and consultants. There is another agenda for Labour on the contrary it lies, for the time being, in the Chancellor's head. Brownites trust he has great things up his sleeve comparable with Bank of England independence, to jump-start his administration. Perhaps a reform of the Lords, a mass housebuilding programme, rebuilding the railways. on the contrary the truth is that nobody really knows what is going upon in Gordon's skull.