Labour sleaze and Saint Gordon

Close friends of the Prime Minister say that he knows that the cash for peerages crisis goes very deep, and may even finish him off. But they insist that he is ‘determined to fight on, if at all possible’. In the face of formidable evidence to the contrary, the Prime Minister still believes that he is the indispensable man.

He was at it again on Tuesday, making a major speech, the first of a series of three, setting out his vision of foreign affairs. Tony Blair is enormously proud of what he has achieved on the international stage. He is sure that he has set a new tone for British foreign entanglements, as Gladstone did in the 1870s. He does not just believe; he knows for certain that he has put enduring human values back at the heart of British diplomacy, instead of the cynical and murderous self-interest of the Conservative years.