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INDONESIA : It's Thursday, so it must be Jakarta - the last stop of this BlairAir tour. This morning in Auckland Tony Blair promised to strive to save the planet from climate change. This evening he embarks on a mission to save civilisation from Islamic extremism. No-one can say this boy lacks ambition.

Lest you think I'm sneering, allow me to point out that I'm merely quoting from the prime minister's recent speeches on terrorism - in particular one delivered in London a week ago which he believes was woefully under-reported. He may have a point.

It reveals that the next stage of Tony Blair's "war on terror" is not to be another military campaign but an ideological one designed to defeat the ideas of "Islamic extremism". To do this he wants to help create a "moderate Muslim" resistance to them.

If you sense an echo of the Cold War in this, you're not the only one. One senior government figure (and that's not code for the PM himself) has told me that all the tools of the state will have to be deployed to defeat the ideas of "Islamic extremists" much as they were in the battle with Communism.

The West desperately needs allies in this new battle of ideas. The PM has come to Jakarta because, we're told, it's "the right place, the right people, the right politics and the right time". In other words he wants to build strong links with the world's largest Muslim country now that's it's run by a directly elected president and not a dictator. He wants to add its leader to those of Pakistan and Turkey as members of a moderate Muslim coalition lined up against the "Islamic extremists".

Why you may wonder have I placed inverted commas around the words "Islamic extremist"?

I've done it to highlight a phrase the prime minister says he was advised to avoid since it might give offence to many ordinary Muslims. They believe that it focuses attention on the religion of the instigators of 9/11, Bali, 7/7 and all the rest rather than on their criminality. This advice, claimed Tony Blair, was part of the same thinking that argued that Muslims were bound to be react violently to the invasion of a Muslim country. It was, he said, all part of "a posture of weakness, defeatism and, most of all was deeply insulting to every Muslim who believes in freedom". Strong words.

He went on : "This terrorism will not be defeated until its ideas, the poison that warps the minds of its adherents, are confronted head-on, in their essence, at their core... This is not a clash between civilisations. It is a clash about civilisation. It is the age-old battle between progress and reaction".

That tells you why we're in Jakarta.

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NEW ZEALAND: Sailing around Auckland Harbour under a blue sky in the blistering sun, you could see why on this day and in this place Tony Blair expressed his wish that the climate would stay just as it it.

He and his wife Cherie celebrated their wedding anniversary with a tour on a luxury motor cruiser courtesy of a local millionaire publisher (Mr Blair is pictured right with his host and NZ PM Helen Clark). Hardly the sort of behaviour to win the approval of green campaigners but he hopes that they will approve of his call for a new international agreement to try to stop climate change.

The plan is simple enough :

• An international agreement that must include all the major developed economies - the US in particular - as well as the key developing nations - starting with China and India
• At its heart the goal of stabilising climate change and greenhouse gas emissions

Tony Blair insists that he's not abandoning or diluting the Kyoto agreement under which countries including Britain (but crucially not including America) agreed to meet targeted cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions.

But it's clear that he thinks there's no chance of chivvying, shaming or bullying the US - let alone China and India - to sign up. There is, he says, one self-evident truth - any deal that does not include those countries is pointless.

Yesterday in Australia - another country that refused to sign up to the Kyoto targets - the prime minister was told that even if they stopped ALL their greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, China's dizzying economic growth would fill the gap in less than 10 months.

Why, though, should these countries even consider a new deal? In America's case, Tony Blair's counting on worries about energy security - that is, the US's desire to end its dependence on oil from unstable parts of the globes. In China and India's case, he hopes that fear of deadly pollution will do the trick.

The rhetoric was ambitious today. Sceptics will point out that it comes the day after the government had to admit to being off target for CO2 emissions. Others will say that Tony Blair's caved in to the Americans. If he achieves what he set out today they may be silenced.

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NEW ZEALAND: Thanks for all your comments. I do read them, you know, even when I'm on my travels. Earlier today Matthew Hill wrote this about the speculation Tony Blair is contending with:

What is wrong with journalists, don't they like any suprises at all? I bet they all spoilt Christmas for themselves by looking for their presents. Blair's already indicated he will stay until pretty-much-the-end of his term; that's quite a long time away! Why isn't that enough information?

The answer's simple - it's because no-one in Westminster believed he meant to serve a full term and a growing number in his own party don't want him to. The events of recent weeks have highlighted that the question of when he stands down might not be for him alone to answer .

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AUSTRALIA: Thus Tony Blair tried to put a stop to the questions about his departure from Number Ten. "We've had enough of those questions," he told me this morning at his news conference with the Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

It was, though, his answers to those questions when asked by Australian interviewers that kicked this story off.

First, he was asked whether it was a "strategic mistake" to have signalled in advance his departure. "Maybe that was a mistake," he said, although Downing Street insists that that wasn't really what he meant and that he would have made that clear if he hadn't been interrupted.

Today on breakfast telly he agreed that politicians have an expiry date and then said that they liked to keep that date to themselves.

His aides are infuriated by this and complain that we in the travelling press corps have gone stir crazy after too long in the air. There is clearly a danger that this appears to be a semantic row fuelled by journalists obsessed with anticipating which precise day Tony Blair will step down. Yet I believe this story does matter.

Tony Blair has now effectively accepted in public what many of his closest allies have told him in private - that his announcement before the last election that it would be his last as leader has backfired. Far from stilling speculation about his future as was hoped, it has fuelled it.

What matters now is that the prime minister is painfully aware that less than a year after being re-elected there is a lively debate about how long he can and should stay in office. He has told aides that he already has a timetable for his departure in mind - he's not revealing what it is, beyond making clear it's not imminent. What is clear is that he is now determined to stay around long enough to see through reforms to the NHS, education and, having changed his mind, the House of Lords too.

At the same time he knows that he must reassure his party that the transition from a Blair to a Brown premiership will be orderly. His difficulty is finding a way to counter the story being told by his enemies - the story of a man clinging to office.

PS

The reason Aussie journalists posed so many questions re Blair's retirement was not to do their Pommie colleagues a favour. Their PM John Howard originally said he'd retire when he was 64 and on his third term. He is now 66, in his fourth term and unless he announces a change of mind soon or the polls change, he's headed for a fifth.

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AUSTRALIA: It seemed like the perfect antidote to those sleaze allegations after what even he admits has been a "ghastly" couple of weeks - sun, smiles and a warm welcome from athletes at their Commonwealth Games village in Melbourne. They looked genuinely pleased to see him, to take his picture and show off their medals. He looked decidedly relieved to be somewhere where no-one would mention the 'S' word.

At one house they'd even prepared a welcome sign and hung it out of their first floor window. It read "Chelsea 1, Newcastle 0. In case you missed it (the FA Cup 1/4 final)". Suitably provoked, our Geordie supporting PM began to exchange banter with the Blues. "You guys are going to have to lend us some money" he shouted without apparently realising what he'd said.

Now, I'm sure that he meant that Newcastle United would benefit from the resources being lavished in West London. No, really I am. But it might be worth keeping half an eye open for a new recruit to the Lords. Arise Lord Abramovitch!

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BRUSSELS: Who says this job's without perks? Today I get to enter the record books. I'm on board British Airways's longest ever non-stop flight - from Brussels to Melbourne. 12,000 miles in 19 hours to Oz, courtesy of Blair Air.

When I suggest to Number 10's spokesman that I will be filing my entry into the record books, he remarks - not altogether reasuringly - that "we haven't actually done it yet, Nick". Such nice people! I do hope my wife, who fears flying, isn't reading.

Lest you suspect this a mere jolly or jaunt to see the Commonwealth Games athletics finals and the closing ceremony (duty will, I fear, force me to be present), allow me to relate the "purpose" of this trip.

It is to be, we are told, "an illustrated guide to the world's inter-dependency". (Yes, I smiled wryly at that line, too - it's worthy of one of those upmarket travel brochures.) The reason for this claim is an itinerary that includes :

• A speech to the Australian Parliament about "Global Alliances" which will praise Australia for its involvement in a war in Iraq even though it would be easy for them to believe that the Middle East had nothing to do with them
  
• A visit to New Zealand - the first by a British PM since the 1950s - whose forces are helping to police Afghanistan
  
• A speech about climate change a little nearer than usual to that hole in the ozone layer
  
• A visit to the world's biggest Muslim country, Indonesia, which Tony Blair will hail as a model Muslim nation since it is a democracy and, he claims, promotes moderate Islam. A country which has, of course, grim experience of terrorism and natural disaster

The large party of travelling journalists may have their minds on other things too. Things tend to go wrong for leaders travelling abroad - particularly to hot places when their voters are shivering back home and particularly when there's "trouble at mill".

I recall the Blairs dressed in Nehru suits in Bangalore as commuters sat on platforms getting chillblains as more trains were cancelled. And, of course, the tragic death of David Kelly while we were flying from the US to Japan.

Look further back and you recall Margaret Thatcher in Paris on the day of the challenge to her leadership, John Major complaining that some of his backbenchers needed the "men in white coats flapping" when in Singapore and, of course, Jim Callaghan's "crisis, what crisis" (which he didn't actually say but everyone thinks he did) on the way back from Guadalope.

So, I may be writing and broadcasting about "an illustrated guide to the world's inter-dependency" over the next week or maybe not. My passport's at the ready, my BA complimentary long-haul pyjamas are waiting to be unwrapped and a glass of something nice is in hand to ease away the 19 hours on board. Oh yes, my laptop's ready. Stay tuned.

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He called it a budget for the future and you knew that he meant HIS future and the Labour Party's, as well as the country's.

Gordon Brown turned his 10th budget into a 10-year plan for the next occupant of Number 10 - whoever that might be. A chancellor with no money to give away - but no black hole to fill either - could only tinker with a spending plan here and the odd tax here.

So, instead he unveiled what he called a long-term ambition to give state schools as much money as private schools receive now. Study the Treasury's Red Book - the bible of hard facts that sheds harsh light on political rhetoric - and you discover that the ambition comes with no figures attached, no target date and no explanation of how it will be paid for.

Does that make it meaningless? No. Because Gordon Brown is giving his party what it craves - what he loves to call a political dividing line - a reminder, in other words of why they are in the Labour party and not the Tories.

His mind is already clearly set on the battle ahead with David Cameron. He reminded the Tory leader that he was there on Black Wednesday; challenged his claim to be green; and insisted that he - like all Tories - would put taxcutting before necessary public investment.

"He is the past" snapped back the other pretender to Number Ten. Which of the two men's Budget Day predictions proves right - which is the future and which the past - will prove to be the lasting memory of this most political of all budgets.

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So we have the the tenth budget from the man who's been waiting 10 years to get into Number 10.

Gordon Brown today matches the feat of Nicholas Vansittart - the last chancellor to deliver 10 speeches pulled out of the famous Red Box. His fate is not an ideal omen. He went on to become... the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

Today - with no money to spend but also no budget black hole to fill - Mr Brown will fill the vacuum with politics. He'll give his vision of how to govern for the next 10 years if, by any chance at all, he might have a role to play.

As it's David Cameron's first budget, expect Brown also to try to draw - in the words of his favourite cliché - "dividing lines with the Tories". He'll try to answer Cameron's greatest strength - on the environment - and expose his greatest weakness - how he can hint at tax cuts at the same time as promising improved public services.

Update 1235 GMT: Gordon must be reading - he used my Vansittart gag as his opening line!

Update 1255 GMT: He can't resist, can he? Gordon Brown has already reminded everyone where David Cameron was on Black Wednesday, rejecting his alleged "budget representations" to cut spending by £17 billion, and attacking his opposition to the climate change levy. He called it a "budget for the future". It's clear now that he meant his and not just ours.

Update 1258 GMT: Tony Blair's face is a picture - occasionally remembering to nod and smile but often looking miles away as if recalling David Cameron's question at PMQs "Is this the Chancellor's last budget?"

Update 1309 GMT: He's still at it! David Cameron's fitting a wind turbine on his new house so as to save energy and look Green. Gordon says he'll pay for wind turbines on schools and council houses.

Update 1332 GMT: So, Gordon's big flourish was to repeat his favourite pledge - investment in schools and hospitals NOT tax cuts. It's an ambition not a promise. A political pledge that the cheque's in the post to schools. If you make Gordon PM.

Update 1415 GMT So much for "No Punch and Judy!" Coming face-to-face with Gordon Brown for the first time, David Cameron leant across across the Despatch Box, shouted rather than spoke and pointed his finger. There were lots of high quality Oxford Union-style gags at Gordon Brown's expense - "In a carbon conscious world we have a fossil fuel Chancellor" and "He's an anologue politician in a digital world". It proved - once again - that he fears nothing and no-one. Whether his final words - "He is the past" - prove to be prophetic, or his own political epitaph, will be the fascinating story of the next few years.

Update 1431 GMT Study the Treasury's Red Book - the bible of hard facts that shed harsh light on political rhetoric - and you discover that the "long term ambition" to match what private schools spend in state schools comes with no figues attached, no target date and no explanation of how it will be paid for. Provided the government doesn't cut school spending it will inevitably reach what's spent now in cash terms in private schools.

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So Knacker of the Yard is .

We have Lloyd George to thank for this being illegal - and his "honours broker" Maundy Gregory was the last man to be charged and imprisoned.

I have honours expert .

"Lloyd George perfected this lucrative trade. He appointed an honours broker, one Maundy Gregory who set up an impressive office in Whitehall. Those who called on Gregory found themselves in surroundings which had all the trappings of the office of a government minister. Even the flunky who ushered in the visitors to the inner sanctum wore a uniform which, to the untrained eye, looked like an official government Messenger.

"In this stage setting, Gregory interviewed well-heeled businessman, newspaper owners, politicians on the make, crooks and status seekers, to discuss how they might help the government in return for a consideration. And the consideration was an honour. The costs were: a viscountcy from £80,000 to £120,000 depending on your bank account; baronies from £30,000 - £50,000; baronetcies from £25,000: and for run of the mill knighthoods the rate was £10,000 - £15,000.

"When the Order of the British Empire was founded by George V in 1917, Lloyd George is said to have asked Gregory what he could ask for an OBE, Gregory's reply was 'about £100 a time'.

"Between 1917 and 1922 when Lloyd George resigned, 25,000 people had received the OBE. A nice little earner. Lloyd George is estimated to have amassed in his private bank account over £1.5 million pounds from the sales of honours. (Value £150 million today). As a child, in the 1930s, I remember seeing how he had spent some of this money on his estate at Churt, in Surrey.

"Gregory, according to John Walker, author of 'The Queen has been pleased', was paid £30,000 a year from the traffic in honours. A letter published in The Times in 1918, signed by 25 peers included the comment that 'honours may come to be regarded as Dishonours'.

"As a result of Lloyd George's scandalous conduct, the exploitation of the honours system for gain was made illegal under The Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925."

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I'm outside the Labour National Executive Committee meeting - the one where Tony Blair had to come face to face with the people he never told about the secret loads that paid for his election campaign.

A tight-lipped prime minister left the meeting a few moments ago passing, as he exited the Attlee Room, an interesting array of portraits.

There was Dr David Owen, who helped split the Labour Party, Michael Foot who led it to its worst ever defeat, a wistful-looking Neil Kinnock who failed to beat the man in the next portrait, John Major, who was thrown out of office by none other than Mr Blair.

He stopped to look at none, until he reached the final picture - a pensive-looking portrait of one T Blair MP, lips pursed, eyes glaring anxiously to one side. The prime minister is growing by the day to look more and more like this portrait. And to add salt into his wounds - right on top of his picture is one prominent Labour critic, Diane Abbott.

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There's nothing like headlines about sleaze to inspire an appetite for political reform.

Today the government has suddenly discovered the appetite to amend electoral law to outlaw secret loans - despite the fact it was the prime minister himself who appears to have personally sanctioned such loans a year or so ago.

Also today, the Tory leader will proclaim his opposition to secret loans - despite the fact that his party's been using them for many years. David Cameron will also argue for a new legal framework which will dramatically change the way politics has been financed in this country. The key to it is a limit on donations - the debate inside the party has been on whether to set that at £30,000 or £50,000 - with match funding and tax relief being deployed to encourage smaller gifts.

This is the mix which the Electoral Commission examined in an enquiry into party funding in 2004 but which they didn't push because the necessary political consensus didn't exist (translation - no sleaze headlines at that time to focus party leader minds). Smaller parties - not just the Liberal Democrats but the nationalist parties too - have argued for reform on these lines - their problem, of course, has more often than not been that they've not had enough money to be accused of sleaze.

Lo! Thus, a consensus emerges to save us from sleaze. Well, hold on a second. There are real problems with reform on these lines which - to abandon the cynicism for a moment - is why both major parties opposed it in the past.

Problem 1: Limits on donations can be got round

Rich people simply give £50k to friends and relatives to give to their favoured party on their behalf. New organisations will be set up - "The Friends of David Cameron", for example or "Committee of Labour backers" which could receive millions and then spend them on political advertising to "complement" that of the parties. Clearly, the law can be drawn up to try to prevent and police this but any study of the growth of so-called "soft money" in the United States shows the way that laws can be circumvented.

Problem 2: Limits on donations may destroy the traditional structure of the Labour Party

Large union donations would be banned on this model - and if they weren't other parties could complain that there was no level playing field. Peter Hain is already publicly expressing the concern felt by many union leaders. Some Tories are already rubbing their hands with glee.

Problem 3: You'll pay for it

The Electoral Commission estimated a £46 million shortfall if fundraising limits were introduced although that did not allow for the fact that much more could be raised through small donations if that was the only way for parties to get the money they needed.

The moral of the story? Laws may help bring transparency and, therefore, act as an antidote to sleaze but, in the end, it is the actions of political leaders which matter most.

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By writing a large cheque to the Labour Party can you - in effect - buy yourself a seat in the House Of Lords?

It would be corrupt. It would be illegal and Tony Blair denies it emphatically. But that's not stopped the question being asked by many in the party. They want to know why their party accepted multi-million pound loans from men who were - weeks later - nominated for peerages.

Under election laws introduced by this government, donations have to be made public but loans can be kept secret - not just from the public and standards watchdogs but from the party's own elected treasurer too - who shouted about it from the rooftops yesterday.

The row he caused has led to him getting an apology from the prime minister, a promise that all future loans will be declared and a pledge - long resisted - to try to build a consensus on the state funding of political parties and reform of the Lords.

That may produce real political change - the Tories are more open to these ideas than ever before - or it may prove to be a convenient distraction from the as yet unanswered questions about loans given and peerages offered.

Tony Blair can boast of making many changes to clean up British politics, but he as good as admitted today that it's taken sleaze alegations to convince him to try to finish the job.

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Yesterday I sent an e-mail to Sir David Garrard's office - he's one of the million pound crowd who Tony Blair wanted to give a peerage to, against the advice of the great and the good on the Lords Appointment Committee.

The e-mail read : "I am being told by others that Sir David's position will be resolved quickly - the clear hint is that Sir David will withdraw his name. My instinct is that party spindoctors may just be tempted to announce this tomorrow when all political attention will be on the big vote on education in the Commons."

Sure enough, that is precisely what has just happened.

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The answer to that Westminster riddle lies deep in the soul of the Labour party. Tonight Tony Blair should be celebrating a thumping Commons majority for his school reforms. And yet when the result's read out it will almost certainly be the Tories who will be cheering and Labour MPs who will look like they've bitten on a caseload of lemons.

Some will even claim that this victory will spell the beginning of the end of the Blair era. How so? Because it will almost certainly be the votes of David Cameron's Tories that will deliver it. This will not be the Labour bill delivered with Labour votes which Tony Blair strove for.

Isn't this, you might ask, an artificial hurdle? Certainly. Isn't it a tad baffling to those outside the Westminster village? Surely. But it is a hurdle that the prime minister set himself and one which - if he fails to clear it - will produce despair in his party. Party politics is, you see, as much a matter for the heart - of tribal loyalty and of knowing who and what you are against - as it is a matter for the head. The act of voting in the Commons by walking into a lobby reinforces that. Unsure how to vote? Then follow your friends. But tonight loyal Labour MPs will be forced to walk with their enemies into the government lobby - enemies who will taunt them for it.

Now, on its own, Tony Blair might simply be able to brush this aside. There have, after all, been other rebellions - some almost certainly larger than this one. But this is far from his only problem.

The complex finances of the Jowell household and of those deemed suitable for a peerage have connected two previously unconnected words - Labour and sleaze. The contents of the Downing Street intray are hardly likely to cheer up those who are disgruntled - new nuclear power stations, a replacement for Trident, NHS reforms that may in the short run lead to bed, ward or even hospital closures. Oh, and then there's May's local elections in which most in the party expect to get a bloody nose. It's a list long enough and gloomy enough to have some - even in the Cabinet - wondering whether Tony Blair should go sooner rather than later.

Team Blair though are ready with their response. This is not our 1990, they say. Blair is NOT Thatcher. His reforms are NOT the poll tax. He, unlike she, is NOT an electoral liability. Gordon Brown is NOT Michael Heseltine. He will NOT force his leader from power - restless though he is and angry at the legacy he might inherit as he seems to be. So, Tony Blair does not see today's vote as a test for him but as yet another test he's set for his party. Are they serious, he asks himself, about carrying on as New Labour? Will they back what he calls "Clause 4 in practice"? Will they turn today's victory for HIS ideas into a political defeat? They, of course, might yet turn on him and insist that it's he and not them who is really the cause of their problems.

P.S.

Tony Blair may actually be defeated in a second vote tonight on the timetable for the parliamentary scrutiny of this legislation. The Tories are promising to form an alliance with Labour rebels to deliver what would be a largely symbolic defeat - though it would create a headache for party managers. I've no doubt that the prime minister will try to turn that defeat into a political victory by taunting David Cameron at Question Time for hypocrisy - claiming that he wants a bill while voting against its swift progress.

Funny business, politics. Lewis Carroll could have had great fun with it.

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Well well well. The big political question ahead of tomorrow's big vote is whether it will be a Labour Bill passed with Labour votes. Why do I say that? Well because John Prescott's said it; so too - by implication - has Ruth Kelly and so has the prime minister.

Or at least I thought he had - at his last Downing Street news conference. Thus, I asked a colleague to dig out the transcript from the Number 10 website. To my surprise, the line I was looking for wasn't there.

One reporter asked the prime minister about Guantanamo Bay and also this question: "Do you think it is sustainable for you to remain in office when a piece of flagship legislation is passed with the help of an opposition party?"

The of Mr Blair's reply reads: "I think I have said what I have said on Guantanamo. And on the first part, you know if you look at the school system at the moment..." before he goes on to talk about the school reforms.

What Tony Blair actually said - we've checked the tape - was:

"Look as you say I am hopeful we will get the vast majority of Labour MPs behind us, in fact I am absolutely sure we will get the vast majority. The question is whether we manage to get enough to get it through with Labour votes alone. But in a sense the issue is doing the right thing for the country, it's what the country expects and of course I want to do it with Labour MPs in full support. Look I think this is a very, very critical issue for the Labour Party for its instincts, for what it's about, for what it is trying to do."

I'm sure it was just a typing error and that Number 10 will be happy to put it straight.

Update (19:33 GMT)
The transcript typers at Number 10 have replied. Apparently they always exclude references to party politics on what is, after all, a government website. Shame they don't make that clear on the transcript or website.

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There are times when you hear something and the hairs on the back of your neck go up. Some words in politics have that effect. The word in question today is "sleaze".

Overused, unspecific, designed to damage rather than illuminate, "sleaze" is still a word that is mightily hard to shake off once it attaches itself to you. Over the past few days I've heard the high-minded editor of the sobre Financial Times use it; I've seen the former editor of the Guardian write it and seen the Daily Mail shout it from the rooftops.

What, you may protest, surely Labour has done "nothing wrong" (to use the party press office's favourite phrase)?

Well, no - provided, that is, you...

• believe Tessa Jowell's protestations of ignorance of her husband's financial transactions;
  
• accept that taking million pound loans from very rich people was not a ruse to get around party funding rules;
  
• think there's nothing questionable about every person who gave the party a million getting a peerage or a knighthood;

then they have, indeed, done nothing wrong.

What's more they can boast that they created the laws on party funding and the Electoral Commission that are now being used to embarrass them.

No matter.

"Sleaze" doesn't depend on facts or track record. It's a smell, a feeling, a cloud that can form around a political party. Once it's there your enemies will use anything they can to increase the size of the cloud - John Reid's mortgage, Cherie Blair's speaking fees and anything to do with Tessa Jowell.

If the warning lights are not flashing red in Downing Street they should be.

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That's my free PR advice to ministers - particularly ministers in trouble. Today Tessa Jowell ignored me and sang The Truth Is Marching On in front of a memorial to Emmeline Pankhurst (You can watch it here.) To be fair, it is International Women's Day and she is the minister for women. And yet what she needs to do is to stay out of the news.

She should have remembered the plight of Peter Brooke - the Tory Northern Ireland secretary - who forever regretted singing Oh My Darling on Irish TV or John Redwood - the Tory Welsh Secretary - who pretended to sing the Welsh national anthem but didn't actually know the words, or even singing Bhohemian Rhapsody on Children in Need.

Today Jowell is facing more questions about her husband's financial dealings and her failure to declare them so the pictures of her singing are a gift to news desks. One Labour MP put it to me that "the precedents are not propitious".

He didn't mean Brooke, Redwood or Robinson. He was referring to David Blunkett - then home secretary - who chose to show it was business as normal by singing "Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again".

Soon after he was gone.

PS.
Just remembered another political singing howler. Cherie Blair singing When I'm Sixty-Four with Chinese students in Beijing. Perhaps the most famous example was Prime Minister Jim Callaghan singing Waiting At The Church when he revealed that he would not be calling an election in 1978.

The one that got away was also a Callaghan moment - Tony Benn recorded Sunny Jim singing "I'm the fat man, the very fat man who waters the workers' beer" to a TUC dinner. Sadly no cameras were present. Oh, then there was Peter Lilley's little list... memories are just flooding back. (). Anyone got any more suggestions?

Oh, by the way, if you're interested in the story. Number Ten has just let slip that the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner has written again to Tessa Jowell.

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Don't hold your breath for Tessa Jowell's Commons appearance this afternoon. The rules of parliamentary question time limit MPs to asking about questions that have already been tabled. You'll be delighted to hear that these include:

- If she will make a statement on the support her department is giving to rugby league.

- What discussions she has had with the Office of Fair Trading and the Department for Trade and Industry on the distribution arrangements for newspapers and magazines.

- If she will intervene to ensure that the portrait of John Donne in the National Portrait Gallery is not lost to the nation.

The official opposition line - led by David Cameron - is to look and sound sympathetic whilst insisting she still has questions to answer. The Tories are content to let the media and the odd Labour MP cause trouble. Thus, it's unlikely that Tessa Jowell will get anything other than a warm reaction today. She is experienced enough though to know that this will not prove her troubles are at an end.

The key to that is whether new questions being asked about her mortgage and her husband's share dealings suggest that she did after all breach the ministerial code or, indeed, Commons rules on declaring interests. The Italian prosecutors may yet add more to the pot.

Margaret Beckett has turned this into a trial of strength with the media, calling it "a kind of witch-hunt and it ought not to go on" and declaring that her colleague has a duty to tough this out "If she can stand it". The next couple of days will see if "she can stand it" and she will have her eyes on the unofficial deadline for ministerial resignations - Wednesday.

Why? Because Tony Blair wants things neat and tidy before standing up for Prime Minister's Question Time.

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Tessa Jowell had managed for many weeks, months and years to separate herself out from her husband's controversial dealings - it's more than a decade now that the Italian courts have been taking an interest in David Mills.

What changed all that was one mortage application, for a vast sum of money for most people - £350,000. Her name on it, his financial dealings, and the only way in which it was found that she had not broken the ministerial code was because she had to plead ignorance.

She had to say, "My husband never told me. I never asked. I didn't know what this financial transaction was about." Had she known, she would have broken the code - Tony Blair would have been forced to sack her.

Now it is quite possible that, in the words of one friend of hers, there has been a breakdown of trust. That in the process of these documents coming out she has discovered things that she simply never knew about her husband, and she has also discovered that he has not told her all that she felt he should have said. But I am afraid, in the end, this is guesswork. What we know is that an enormous strain has been put on the family by the drip-drip of revelations from the Italian prosecutors.

We are told that they are now separating, but the hints from what I am being told, the hints from the statement from David Mills' solicitor, that this is temporary and that they hope to get back together again, suggest partly a painful personal decision but partly a calculation - to separate off the vulnerable political person, the minister, from her husband so that both can deal with their own problems in their own ways without becoming intertwined.

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So it did turn out to be Ming after all. You can see more, including my interview with him from last night's news, and some of that fantastic footage of Ming the Athlete, here.

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Ming, Chris or Simon? Nobody knows.

All the talk about who's the bookies' favourite to win the Lib Dem leadership race merely proves it. Bookies, remember, are not soothsayers. Their odds merely reflect their exposure to financial risk. They respond to the bets of punters. The sure way to make your guy the favourite is to bet on him. The widespread suspicion at Westminster is that that's just what friends of Chris Huhne have been doing.

Pollsters can't help us much either with this select and special bunch of voters (there are around 73,000 Lib Dem members). Conventional polling struggles to get more than one or two Lib Dem members in a normal sample. Internet polling - which showed a surge for Chris Huhne - performed well in the Tory contest, but there are still doubts about the reliability of samples in contests of this sort.

Finally, we have the Lib Dems to thank for not being able to predict the winner. They passed a rule so that membership information was private. No candidate has a canvassing list so even they don't know.

My hunch is it'll be Ming. The official result will be at three o'clock, but the talk is that we should hear a whisper around lunchtime… keep an eye open.

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Funny thing politics. Victory for Tony Blair's education reforms looks increasingly likely to turn into a political defeat for the prime minister himself.

No wonder at Question Time a Labour MP talked about the "politics of Lewis Carroll". (You can watch it here - go to the last question.) David Taylor was referring to the fact that so many Labour MPs oppose the reforms and so many Tories back them.

Despite Tony Blair telling his MPs that he wants "a Labour Bill passed with Labour votes" senior ministers increasingly believe that they will only win thanks to the votes of Tory MPs. Yes, concessions have been made. Yes, leading rebels have switched - albeit grudgingly - to become backers of the legislation. But, no, backbenchers are not following. That became clear at a series of meetings last night - hours after the Bill was published.

It's much too early to predict rebel numbers. Huge political pressure will be put on potential rebels over the next fortnight to come into line. Yet I can find few who seriously believe that there will be fewer than 35. That's the magic number which means that Tony Blair needs Tory support to win.

So, will that, as some have claimed, be curtains for the PM? Already his allies are insisting that "a win is a win is a win". He himself has said it would be absurd for him to resign if he'd just won a vote. But other senior Labour figures are speculating on what size of rebellion would so damage Tony Blair's authority and credibility as to hasten his departure from Number 10.

Prepare for a battle of spin. Blairites will point to vast Labour rebellions that he's shrugged off in the past - like the 73 who rebelled over top-up fees or the 65 who rebelled on cuts to lone parent benefit. Enemies of Blair will say that on a flagship bill this early in a new Parliament a revolt that big should spell the end.

Lewis Carroll would have had great fun explaining how victory could in fact mean defeat. And with the fact that the vote will take place on the Ides of March (the 15th). Beware, Mr Blair, beware.

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