91Èȱ¬

Here's about why Gordon Brown slipped a reference to Trident into his Mansion House speech.

Bear with me, as it tells you a great deal about relations at the top of this government. (I relayed this in a review of the week in full technicolour on last night's - click here if you want to watch - it's a Sex in the City pastiche starring this very blog).

You may recall that in the best (worst?) traditions of spin, the words Gordon Brown used about retaining Britain's nuclear deterrent were the same as in Labour's manifesto. Except that he added "in the long term". Reporters were told that this really meant that he was in favour of renewing or replacing Trident.

The chancellor had told his spin doctors to convey his support for updating Trident because he feared he was about to be 'out spun' - that the Blairites were about to say that only their man could be trusted to upgrade Britain's nuclear deterrent.

And the reason he did it that day?

He'd just received papers for the first cabinet committee on Trident - and that's why he slipped it in the speech in that curious way.

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Unnerved.

That's the answer to about how I felt when by David Cameron. The Tory Leader - in case you missed it - quoted my out-pouring of frustration written about Gordon Brown's deeply coded support for replacing or upgrading Trident.

It did though lead me to dig deeper as to why the Chancellor came out for Trident in such a curious way. It's an interesting tale. It will, though, I'm afraid have to wait until later - it's turning into a busy day.

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Further to on today's "Blair to go by May" ... I have a new theory for you.

Labour now fears that it may lose both Blaenau by-elections and come a poor third or even fourth in Bromley. This would come a day before the party's National Policy Forum meets. Friends of the PM were trying to pre-empt a possible post by-election panic.

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Standby for a tale of two Clarkes at PMQs. David Cameron will surely quote Charles Clarke's claim that Tony Blair has lost direction, purpose and leadership and Tony Blair will surely retort with by promising a British Bill of Rights in place of the foreign-inspired Human Rights Act.

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So, that's that then. Tony Blair's going next May and he'll announce that in September before the Labour Party Conference. Or so a number of my distinguished fellow commentators predict.

Don't believe a word of it.

I don't mean to suggest that they're making it up. I've no doubt that assorted Blairite MPs or confidants have said as much. I'm simply saying that you need to distinguish between the Westminster war gaming that fills many an idle hour and a plan or decision by the man himself.

What Charles Clarke's musings this week have highlighted is how Tony Blair's prime ministerial horizon is drawing ever closer. His range of possible departure dates are narrowing. Whether or not the former home secretary's remarks were fuelled or coloured by anger, disappointment or calculation, what he said reflects the mood of many in Team Blair who no longer see how he can carry on until 2008.

The party, they fear, may not tolerate another conference at which Tony Blair presents himself as the man of the future and slaps down Gordon Brown's claims to that title. Friends of Mr Brown - whether organised by him or acting as a result of their own frustration - will once again demand clarity about the "transition" just as they did after May's elections.

Then, of course, there's next May's electoral test. Those fearing another hammering in the locals and in the Welsh assembly and Scottish parliamentary elections may demand change. Thus go the conversations that are fuelling the growing sense that Tony Blair will have to say something this autumn and will have to go by next May. That, and the knowledge that he once remarked that Margaret Thatcher should have stood down on the 10th anniversary of her election with her reputation intact.

As you'll recall, that same anniversary comes for this prime minister next May.

And yet... and yet. Until and unless someone is willing to bring Tony Blair down, he remains the master of the timing of his departure. He knows as well that the public will not easily forgive the removal of a man who's already announced he's going.

He knows that Gordon Brown fears the consequences of removing him even more than he hates the prospect of him staying in office. He knows too that his old friend "events" might, once again, throw him a lifeline.

Any real - rather than merely political - crisis would highlight his experience and leadership and shame his critics into staying silent. Thus, the prime minister will not, if recent history is any guide, make any decisions until he absolutely has to.

So, if I were a betting man I'd wager that he won't still be around next summer. But I'm not a betting man and I wouldn't advise you to wager much on this latest proclamation of what Tony Blair will do.

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Well, it was worth the wait.

Charles Clarke has broken his post-sacking silence and done so in a way which will have his successor John Reid - and the man who sacked him - wincing.

You can see what he has to say in full on (UPDATE: you can now watch it here) but these are his key points:

• The 91Èȱ¬ Office was "fit for purpose"...

"The overall picture of a department 'not fit for purpose' in any of the respects he described I think is and was fundamentally wrong, and I think John was wrong to use those descriptions as I told him before he gave evidence to the select committee..."

"I used to describe myself as... tough but not populist. Each home secretary has to decide their own style..."

• The home secretary should not jump on media bandwagons...

"I don’t know if his timing was influenced by the News of the World campaign or not. I haven’t spoken to him about it so I can’t tell you. If it was then I would criticise it. I don’t think that’s the right thing to do."

"The home secretary of the day should not simply be running on the bandwagon of some particular media campaign..."

"It’s very important that the home secretary does his very best to give the confidence to the country that the Criminal Justice System is working properly and effectively and well. I very much hope that John and the way that he does it will stand up for creating a system in which people can have confidence right across the range rather than simply responding to a campaign."

• Or criticise court judgements...

"Decisions are taken by parts of the Criminal Justice System which the home secretary of the day is routinely asked to comment on and either criticise or support. I made it my practice not to do that. For myself I thought it was my duty not to comment on particular cases."

And there's more. On Radio 4 tomorrow morning (speaking to John Humphrys on On the Ropes) Charles Clarke will talk about whether Tony Blair's leadership can recover.

Over the weekend there was speculation that Mr Clarke might turn out to be Tony Blair's Geoffrey Howe - i.e a former friend and insider whose criticism acts as a catalyst for his leader's removal. Had Charles Clarke uttered his criticisms in the Commons and not while the nation's attention was on the World Cup, that parallel might have proved apt.

However, done at this time in this way it won't bring Tony Blair down. It will, though, fuel the questions about whether and how Tony Blair can stay in the job for as long as he wants.

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Remember Charles Clarke?

How could you forget his barely contained anger on the day he was sacked as home secretary after what became known as the foreign prisoner fiasco. Ever since he's maintained his silence. Today that silence ends and his fightback begins.

He's sent to the Commons 91Èȱ¬ Affairs Select Committee giving his version of events. It makes one essential point - that although he had known about the problem posed by the growing number of foreign prisoners in British prisons for many months, "it was only in late March 2006 that ministers, including myself, were made aware of the failure to consider for deportation some foreign national prisoners at the end of their sentence". The perception that he'd been warned but did nothing is what, he clearly believes, did for him.

On tonight's Ten O'Clock News and at greater length on Newsnight he will also give his response to the suggestion that the 91Èȱ¬ Office is not - and was not - "fit for purpose". It will make for interesting viewing.

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I'm beginning to have certain sympathy with my Dad who used to moan about the country being run by lawyers.

The question as to whether would actually make any difference is one that already has the lawyers locking their horns.

The case for - I'm told - is that the grants countries with their own written constitutions or bills of rights (eg Germany) what's called "a margin of appreciation" - a bit of leeway, to the likes of you and me. In addition, Britain could, like France, seek certain "reservations" on the convention allowing considerations of national security to outweigh human rights considerations.

The case against is that, ultimately, the court in Strasbourg would decide and so a new Bill would make no difference.

Rest assured that however expert lawyers may be, there is no single correct answer - giving fresh potency to that old cliché that when it comes to the law "you pays yer money and you make your choice".

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Did Gordon Brown ?

After all, the Tories say that he was just repeating what's in Labour's manifesto. The defence secretary seemed to agree when he said that what he was saying was "entirely consistent" with the manifesto. So where does that leave people like yours truly who insist he is saying something significant?

In terms of what Gordon Brown actually said I can only point to the four words - "in the long run" - which the chancellor added to the manifesto commitment to maintain Britain's independent nuclear deterrent. Manifesto commitments last only one Parliamentary term. Trident can't simply be maintained in the long run. It must be either updated or replaced. Thus Gordon Brown is saying something that the manifesto did not say - that he's ready to spend billions doing that.

Then you add to that what he didn't say, but which I've been told. The chancellor is ready to back the advice of military leaders, and he expects the decision to be taken in principle before the end of the year.

Why on earth - you may ask - didn’t he just say that explicitly instead of relying on people like me to explain what he really meant? Why allow the doubt? Does he want "deniability"?

Well, he could not say "I am committed to updating Trident" because it's not his announcement to make. He is not - in case you've forgotten - the prime minister. Furthermore, ministers have not yet sat down to take this decision - even though they have been discussing the need to take it for several years. Thus he used journalists to spell out what he did not. Believe you me, I wish he would use code and spin less and speak in plain English a little more. Then we could focus on the real debate.

That debate should focus on whether Britain's nuclear deterrent is, as one Labour backbencher says, "unacceptably expensive, economically wasteful and militarily unsound".

The name of that rebel? Gordon Brown speaking in 1984.

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It's one of those evenings when there's a large gap between the words a politician uses and their real meaning and significance.

Tonight Gordon Brown committed himself to retaining Britain's independent nuclear deterrent in the long term. No surprise there you might think - until you focus on the fact that Britain's Trident missiles and the submarines that carry them will have to be replaced or updated at a cost of many billions of pounds - some say 10, others as much as 25.

And until you focus on the fact that the decision - I'm told - must be made in a matter of months and not years. Gordon Brown wants anti-nuclear campaigners to know that - despite official insistence that no decision has been taken - he is just as committed to replacing Trident as Tony Blair. This will disappoint some who were counting on a change of prime minister leading to a change in Britain's foreign and defence policy.

It will please Tony Blair who's demanded Gordon Brown's backing on the tough policy choices before he's ready to leave Number Ten.

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The Treasury have just released the chancellor's schedule for tomorrow.

At breakfast Gordon Brown will chair a seminar on the teaching of British values and history in schools. At lunchtime he'll host a seminar on climate change with the former US Vice President Al Gore (Britain's "next prime minister" meeting the man who some believe will be America's next president and should have been the current one).

Then, just before dinner he'll speak to war veterans about National Veterans Day. It may have caught your attention that none of these things relates to his job as - well - chancellor.

This comes after his visit yesterday to meet his party's Euro MPs, his trip to Northern Ireland to meet the province's political leaders and his meeting in Berlin with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Tonight he makes the Chancellor's traditional speech at the Mansion House. I wonder if he'll stick to economic policy?

Is it just possible that we are seeing the much talked of "stable and orderly transition" taking place unannounced before our very eyes?

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It was once said of Ken Clarke that he was the sort of man who would see a fight starting on the other side of the road and cross it to join in.

John Reid is just such a politician. Within a few short weeks he has picked a fight with...

• His civil servants - dubbing the 91Èȱ¬ Office "not fit for purpose" and instituting a "heads will roll" culture.
• Judges.
• His ministerial colleagues the Attorney General and the Lord Chancellor.
• And now with senior policemen - one of whom has described him as being, in effect, blackmailed by pressure to change policy on sex offenders by the country's biggest selling paper The News of the World. (It was an extraordinary attack which you can listen to here).

And, you know what? John Reid won't mind one little bit. He believes he's standing up for the public against the establishment. He believes these are the sort of headlines that do Labour no harm at all. And he believes that it is only by distancing himself comprehensively from current policy failures that he can hang on to his job, unlike his predecessor.

Stand by for his next big fight. After 100 days in the job he will unveil his masterplan for restructuring the 91Èȱ¬ Office, rebalancing the criminal justice system and reforming the immigration service.

It's a plan that may well require more money. The problem is that the last home secretary did a deal with the chancellor over the budget for the next 3 years. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see John Reid try to re-open it. After all, there's no fight he relishes more than one with Gordon Brown himself.

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Tony Blair's taking this to extraordinary lengths, taking calls on last night's 606 phone-in on Radio Five Live (go here to listen).

Politicos will have noted that he dubbed the "Wayne Rooney of the Cabinet". I've no doubt he meant it as a massive compliment. Was it Rooney's looks, his intelligence, or his potential as a manager he had in mind?

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I bring you shock news.

When the prime minister goes to an EU Summit he travels in a fast car and then in a plane. He walks very fast. Motorbike outriders stop the traffic for him - and the British ones are the best.

These, I kid you not, are the insights contained in in which the travelled with the prime minister to last week's EU summit. After years of being accused of being obsessed with process and not substance, I confess that I expected a little more.

Izzard does, as you'd expect, capture one amusing bit of "process" - the moment the pops by whilst Tony Blair and his gloomy entourage are watching England's dismal performance against Trinidad and Tobago.

To hear any substance at all, you have to wait until you're 19 minutes in (see, I did listen till the end) to hear the PM say that negotiations are part of the way we do business in the modern world.

You are not told, though, what the negotiations were actually about. Izzard's conclusion is that there's "a lot of running about... boring bits... everyone works hard... I think it works... I like it - it's good and positive stuff".

He concludes, "I hope it's been vaguely illuminating". The emphasis should be on "vaguely".

But let's be fair, we politicos - whether practitioners or journalists - are all in the business of trying to reach those parts of the electorate that are hardest to reach. The main point of access for this podcast, I'm told, won't be via the No 10 website or other political media - but via iTunes where it will be in the entertainment, comedy and politics sections.

Those drawn in by Izzard may well now know the most basic facts about Europe - like how many countries are in it or that that their PM represents Britain at summits four times a year. And he does tell his listeners to go to to learn more.

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I have just got round to watching this week's Dead Ringers.

It has a sketch about what I called Labour's World Cup strategy . When faced by questions, Tony Blair starts to count down from twenty. At zero the flag of St George drops and the PM says "speak to the flag cos the nation aint listening" (a pastiche on a street phrase my kids inform me!).

The only thing that spoils the joke is the interviewer who wears implausibly large specs. Doesn't he realise what a fool he looks?

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It's been pointed out by some contributors that there's a bit of a problem with comments.

The number of comments you see after each post (and on the right hand side of the main blog page) is the number of comments that should be on each post. But we have some technical problems which slows this process...

I've asked one of my technically minded pals to explain.

"The difference is due to the way that the content of the blogs is published. Without going into too much heavy detail, when a blog is updated, certain bits of it are rebuilt and certain bits are automatically changed. These rebuilt sections are then transferred across multiple servers. Sometimes due to the heavy load on bbc.co.uk some of the bits find themselves stuck in a queue waiting to be published. The rebuilt bits can take longer to arrive than the others... and so there is sometimes a disparity between number of comments 'totals' and actual published numbers."

So there you have it. I'm told that we are looking into a solution.

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So, now we know. is over. The judge, you may recall, was in the dock. He faced the charge of being "soft". The prosecution led by The Sun was - it seemed - supported by the 91Èȱ¬ Secretary.

The verdict though is "not guilty". Not my verdict, you understand, but that delivered by none other than John Reid's Cabinet colleague, the lord chancellor.

Lord Falconer has - I'm told - read the judgement in the case of the paedophile Craig Sweeney (who got life but was told he could be out in 5 years). He also knows the judge. His conclusion is that a combination of the sentencing guidelines - which set out a discount of a third for an early guilty plea - and the law - which gives automatic consideration of parole after half a sentence has been served - put the judge in a straightjacket.

This is not what the home secretary thought. It was not what the prime minister said at Question Time yesterday (watch it here).

It does though go to the heart of the tension between the judiciary and politicians. Governments - this one and the Tories before them - have sought to limit the discretion of the judiciary often in response to public outrage at low sentences. The problem is that discretion can be used to be tough as well as soft.

In this case, the judge wanted to be tougher but could not be. The sentencing guidelines are already under review. The lord chancellor has made plain that the law on parole - a new law that's only just been enacted - needs to be re-visited but he has not said how.

We witness once again the law of unintended consequences. Consider the 53 "lifers" who were released after serving less than six years. They only got life because of the "two strikes and you're out" law Michael Howard introduced as the last Tory home secretary. It forced judges to give life for a series of offences which had never earned that sentence before. Many of M'luds felt it devalued "life". Many reacted by setting very low tariffs. That's why many are now out.

The Holy Grail politicians have sought for years is how to fill the prisons with the really bad guys serving very long sentences and empty them of people who are probably only learning how to be badder. No-one's cracked it yet.

So, we are left with the odd paradox of imprisoning more and more people whilst letting out serious offenders who then re-offend which then fuels demands for more to be locked up.

And so on and so on.

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First, the home secretary condemns this week's five-year sentence for the paedophile Craig Sweeney for being "too lenient".

Then, the judiciary's defenders insist that this sentence stemmed directly from a law this government passed - the Criminal Justice Act 2003.

As I explained in , "the five year minimum sentence handed out stemmed not from the top of the judges head, but from a sentencing formula - 18 years for the offence, take away a third for a guilty plea (leaving 12), then half what you're left with for the date parole can be considered (which gets you down to six). Finally, take away the time already served on remand (leaving you five years and 108 days)."

Now, the architect and parliamentary pilot of that act - David Blunkett - has hit back. He insists that the law was drawn up to ensure that the most serious offenders were given what were called "indeterminate" sentences - in other words there would be no "tariff" for the number of years they should serve. He clearly expected that people like Sweeney would come into this category.

Did the 91Èȱ¬ Office draw up the law badly or did judges - angry at being told what to do by politicians - subvert the law? Did both parties worry about prison overcapacity - whatever they said in public?

Finding the answer is my task for the day.

PS

My guess for what David Cameron will say at PMQs to Tony Blair "Don't moan. Act now"

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The judges are in the dock. The charge? Being too soft. The sentence? To be named and shamed in The Sun followed, if they get their way, by the sack.

The new home secretary has rushed to join the campaign, issuing a public denunciation of , the paedophile whose horrific attack on a three year old girl resulted in a sentence that could be a short as five years (although it might be as long as life).

John Reid believes that the public should know where the fault lies for sentences which are "too lenient", and hopes that public pressure will make judges think twice before passing them. Good for him, many of the public and a good many politicians will say.

Not so the attorney general. It is he who has the power to ask the Court of Appeal to consider whether a sentence is too lenient - something he's done 339 times in the past three years, producing increased sentences in roughly three quarters of cases. He has, though, to make a legal case and not one rooted in politics or public outrage. He knows that the judges regard comments like those of the home secretary as an improper political assault on judicial independence (listen to the former judge Sir Oliver Popplewell on the Today programme this morning warning John Reid that "it is unwise for the 91Èȱ¬ Secretary to poke his nose into legal affairs").

The attorney fears that defence lawyers may use such political pressure in court to argue that their client's case has been pre-judged by the media - as happened in last week's review of the sentences given to a baby rapist.

The attorney general also has powers to ask judges to look again at sentencing practice. He has already asked the Sentencing Guidelines Council to look at what he believes is the unduly lenient sentencing in paedophile cases. And the council is already looking into the issue of whether and how sentences should be reduced for guilty pleas.

The five year minimum sentence handed out yesterday stemmed not from the top of the judges head, but from a sentencing formula - 18 years for the offence, take away a third for a guilty plea (leaving 12), then half what you're left with for the date parole can be considered (which gets you down to six). Finally, take away the time already served on remand (leaving you five years and 108 days).

The process - of asking M'luds if they'd be so kind as to think again - appears painfully slow and ineffective to many politicians. After all, it's three years since the Court of Appeal warned judges that if they failed to pass proper sentences in sexual cases this would "cause public concern and affect the confidence of the public in the system".

So, it is that a politician under fire for failing to protect the public leaps at the chance of turning fire on the courts for - you guessed it - failing to protect the public.

And the public are left wondering what on earth is going on.

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No-one can complain that the . Have they, though, been wise?

On Thursday, they promised to make dramatic income tax cuts costing around £18 billion, paid for by a dramatic increase in green taxes - approx £8bn - and taxes on the wealthy - approx £10bn.

After speaking to the boffins at the Institute of Fiscal Studies I'm left with the following questions :

1: If the green taxes work - that is, they limit polluting behaviour - won't they raise less and less over time?

2: Why do they say they're helping the poor when the poor don't pay tax and therefore won't benefit from tax cuts? Since the poor do, however, pay green taxes to drive cars, won't they need to be compensated for the switch?

3: If you take these announcements together with the Lib Dem policy of replacing the council tax by local income tax, won't the real gainers be the politically sensitive middle group, whilst the rich will suffer and the poor won't gain?

4: Even so, will they ever persuade people of this? Whether you are a winner or a loser from the Lib Dem reform package will depend on an awful lot of variables (how much you earn, where you live, the size of your house, whether you have shares and other property, how much pension saving you do, whether you drive, whether you holiday abroad etc). The Lib Dems got in an awful mess trying to explain their local income tax changes at the last election. Won't this prove even harder and provide more nasty bits for the other parties to isolate?

The detailed plans aren't out till next month so answers may not come till then - but at least they've given us something to think about.

One last question. Given that the party desperately wants to contrast their serious policy development with what they call the Tories superficial spin, did they really have to have Ming marching in to music and cheering before a promo video of his colleagues telling us how marvellous he is?

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An eagle-eared has an interesting take on David Cameron's worries about music that promotes knife crime. Nick Rikker writes from Barcelona to point out that tracks from Mr C's favourite bands have the odd sharp reference:

The Smiths, I know it's over - "The knife wants to slit me/Do you think you can help me?"
Radiohead - Knives Out - "Look into my eyes/I'm not coming back/So knives out"
Radiohead - Phillipa Chicken -"I got bombs, I got guns, I got brains"

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My suggesting that William Hague might tempt David Cameron to kick into the long grass proposals to leave the European People's Party seems to have rung a few Eurosceptic alarm bells.

"He wouldn't do that... would he?" I asked. The answer, I'm now told, is that the grass won't be that long. He may recommend a delay in forming a new group but not one lasting all the way until 2009.

Now, some of you have dared to suggest that this is not exactly all the talk down the "Dog & Duck". True, but that doesn't mean it's of no consequence.

Europe has damaged the Tories in the past not so much for what they've said but the fact that they appear to care about little else and are divided on the issue. In addition, the longer they stay ahead in the polls the more people will question whether they are ready to form a government. A breach of relations with our key European partners will not exactly help.

That's why the EPP matters.

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Further to ... I note that William Hague talked this morning (listen here) of his promise to form "a new group".

So, another possibility looms.

He could advise his new boss not to break his promise (perish the thought) but to meet it very very slowly. He would announce that the Tory party would leave the EPP and form a new group... in 2009. This would allow dissenting MEPs to say they'd met their promises too. David Cameron would have a row with some Eurosceptics but when you're trying to re-position your party that might be bad thing. And it might be better than a row with Merkel and many of his own MEPs.

Now he wouldn't do that... would he?

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What on earth you may wonder can go wrong for David Cameron? Six months into the job he's got a 10-point poll lead and is basking in praise from the most unlikely quarters.

I'll tell you what - the same thing that went wrong for Maggie and then Major. It's the issue that three times stopped Ken Clarke - the public's choice - from following them. The subject that the Tory leader has barely uttered a word on since his election. I speak, of course, of the cause of so much neuralgia for the party - Europe.

Today William Hague makes his first speech on the subject as Mr Cameron's shadow foreign secretary. The man who promised to save the pound has been given the task of putting a modernising gloss on Euroscepticism. Out goes any hint that the Tories are backward looking Little Englanders. In comes the idea that they are forward looking reformers urging Europe to pursue free trade and free markets and not new ways to run itself or Britain. (The Sun calls this "going soft" on Europe even though all Mr Hague will have changed is language and tone, and not policy)

What he won't mention though are three letters that are giving him and his party a political headache. They are EPP, and they stand for European People's Party. That's the name for the European movement of the centre right which includes the parties which run 10 European governments, including those in Germany and France and - albeit uncomfortably - has included the Conservative Party for many years too.

Eurosceptic Tories persuaded David Cameron to promise to do something that Mr Hague and indeed Mr Duncan Smith and Mr Howard did not do when they were leader - to get out of a grouping they regard as unreformably federalist. It's a promise that Mr Hague now has to deliver but which is enraging many in Europe.

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel - a Christian Democrat - has refused to meet David Cameron because of his stance on the EPP. Merkel has though formed a close bond with Tony Blair and last week met Gordon Brown who hopes to do the same.

Many of Mr Cameron's Euro MPs are even less impressed - leaving a big group will rob them of the right to chair European committees. They say that they promised both their electorates and their European allies that they would stay in the EPP until the next Euro elections - and many will simply refuse to move. Their opposition is fuelled by the news of who their new allies might be - a Polish party they accuse of homophobia, a Lithuanian party they call extreme and a lone Irish republican and a campaigner for Italian pensioners' rights. Mr Hague has been counting on the Czech governing party to give his new group credibility but they are locked into tricky coalition building at home and may not be ready - yet at least - to break coalitions in Europe.

Some Eurosceptics urge the Tories to sit on their own in the European Parliament though that would allow Labour to have enormous fun at their expense. Witness :

"If the Conservatives withdraw from the EPP, Jean-Marie Le Pen will sit there, Mrs. Mussolini will sit here, the Conservative party will sit there and, worst of all, Robert Kilroy-Silk will sit there. Before the hon. Gentleman attacks my leadership in the European Union, he should start to exercise some himself."

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Operation World Cup is under way.

No, not an op on Wayne's foot. And no, not a plan to combat hooliganism. This is Downing Street's not very secret strategy to steady the good ship Labour. The thinking's simple. If we can just make it to Saturday without sinking, then the public's minds will be on metatarsals, robot dances and barbeque fuel - and the papers will have more than enough to fill without needing to cover day 19 of the row about John Prescott.

In the meantime, the masterplan involves ensuring that Tony Blair's seen to be as busy as possible doing the public's business and not worrying about his own or his deputy's position.

That's why the cameras were invited in to a Cabinet committee for the first time yesterday. That's why he announced a policy he's announced before and dropped before on cutting housing benefit for those who are anti-social. That's why he met business leaders to discuss climate change today. And - this is the last "that's why", I promise - he's doing a web interview this afternoon taking questions from the public (which you can take watch and take part in by going to ).

This is the way Blair has survived previous crises - look calm in public and look busy too. On other occasions it's meant that he's been been able to defy all those who predicted - or hoped - that he'd be gone soon. Gordon Brown's supporters may wish to ponder whether the World Cup will allow him to escape again.

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Today yet another example of political cross-dressing.

The Tory leader is and to admit that it's their policies which are more often to blame for the failure of public services to deliver.

Meantime the "next leader of the Labour Party" warns of the need to restrict public sector pay and to introduce more local pay. And the current leader "confuse the ethos of public service with the vested interest of keeping things as they are".

What is going on?

The Tories are simply responding to the reality that a huge proportion of the electorate work for the public sector. The giveaway sentence in David Cameron's speech is "Anyone working in the public services could easily have heard a pretty negative message from my party - 'there's too many of you, you're lazy and inefficient.' This is far from my view."

To win, Cameron must recast the political debate so it's a question of who will manage the public services best and not who's in favour and who against them.

Brown and Blair though are looking ahead to times when the cash will be tighter and the electorate more impatient about the failure to deliver after so much money has poured in.

How different would their policies be in government? On the evidence of what we see now - not very.

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