I feel cheated

I arrived in this country when John Major was Prime Minister. I went to work at a small agency close to the Treasury in Westminster. My greatest claim to fame as a professional pundit is that in the week before the 1992 General Election which the professionals were then suggesting would go to Labour I backed the Tories to hold on ... and I was just one seat out.

Anyhow... a lot of water has passed under a whole lot of bridges since then.

I woke up this morning to news that Tony Blair's self-induced little local difficulty (persistent speculation about the date of his departure from office) had rather abruptly evolved into a not-inconsiderably large problem. Wor Tone's turned to the Australian Right in the past for tactical and strategic support, but he's clearly not learned the lessons that were always available.

Little Johnny's clung to office through an enduring speculation that directly parallels the challenge facing Blair, to whit the Man Next-door. In Blair's case the Man Next-door does literally live in the adjacent house. Peter Costello holds the two posts analogous to those occupied by Gordon Brown which are senior Finance Minister and Heir Apparent.

Somehow Little Johnny to date has succeeded in keeping Costello somewhere other than entirely off-side while retaining a firm grasp of the levers of power. I may loathe the man and also in large part his policies and what he 'stands for' but I cede to no person in my admiration for his skills as a politician. In that sphere if no other Little Johnny is peerless.

When I left for work today, with letters from junior minsters calling on the Prime Minister to step down, junior ministers resigning to agitate from the back benches, it looked like the Prime Minister might be gone before I returned home. Sadly, he's still with us even in the political sense.

Like Costello Gordon Brown does appear to have learned hard lesson served up by Hezza who observed with some prescience that He Who Wields the Knife Seldom Wears the Crown. One can't help but wish that Heseltine had kept his smattering of classics to himself since Brown, Costello, Johnno and all the other viable would be challengers are tonight sitting on their hands. Which means that this 'thing' could go on and on and on until Cherry Cherie says otherwise.