The beginning of the end? (For Tony Blair)

We went to a comedy show at our local school this week, and one of the performers drew our attention to the curious way that nothing you can say to Tony Blair ever appears to affect him or hurt his feelings. "You could shout, 'Oi, Tony, your son is a crackhead and your wife is a whore!' and he'd smile back at you and say, 'Well, that's two points of view.' "

I was reminded of that two days later at his press conference in Downing Street when the assembled hacks more or less accused him of running a private, secret and corrupt slush fund, and suggested it was time for him to resign. Other politicians might get angry. Some would bluster. Some would wheedle evasively. Blair looks as if it's a perfectly natural thing to say, even if he disagrees with you, as in: "No, I didn't think Brokeback Mountain went on too long," or, "Honestly, I've never found that Chinese food keeps me awake at night." There is a cyborg quality to him; you can almost hear the clang as the bullets bounce off.

Simon Hoggart is britains funniest political sketch writer.

Simon Hoggart is britains funniest political sketch writer.

no a geek is some who's guilty pleasure is reading Hansard.

Helping the home secretary unwind

Wednesday March 22, 2006

Charles Clarke was asked a tricky question yesterday. "I would need to go back to my speeches in the chamber, which I sometimes do late at night for my own relaxation," he told the home affairs committee.

It was a sweet moment. But did the home secretary mean it? We had a vision of him being dropped at home. A muffled voice from upstairs asks "is that you, darling?" He says he'll be up in a moment.

But we all need to unwind after a busy day at the office. Some people might pick up a thriller, or search for internet porn. I see Mr Clarke pouring himself a modest malt whisky. His eye travels over the green and gold bindings of his prized Hansard collection.

"Ah yes," he thinks with a little thrill, "my speech on the second reading of the police authorities bill!" He pulls a wing chair in front of the last embers of the fire, and reads his own words with chuckles of pleasure. "That was a good line!" he thinks, or, "I saw off that intervention all right! Heh heh!"

At four o'clock his wife, wondering why she is still alone in bed, comes downstairs and finds him asleep, the book open on his lap, a happy smile upon his face.

The whole session, devoted to terrorism, was rather like that, as the committee and the minister jockeyed and bantered with each other. Mr Clarke clearly wanted to say that people who voted against the 90 days' detention without trial clause would have blood on their hands if there was another terrorist attack. But he couldn't say it outright.

One MP, the Lib Dem Jeremy Browne, said that if the public really was at more risk now, then the onus was on Mr Clarke to do more to protect us.

Mr Clarke replied that the onus was even more on those who had voted against 90 days. "It was their decision to vote for something that leaves us less protected."

He had tried, oh how he had tried. He had had talks with David Cameron - then running for Tory leader - and with Mark Oaten, then the Lib Dem home affairs man. He had invited them to phone him over the weekend, but neither had.

He sounded like a young woman who has given a boy her phone number, and is crushed not to hear from him. "And I thought we were getting on so well," she tells her girlfriends, "he seemed really interested in challenging the spread of international terrorism!"

John Denham, the committee chairman, pointed out that the police could not name a single case when someone would have been charged as a terrorist if they had been held any longer. And what court would accept evidence from someone who had been held without charge for so long?

Mr Clarke told him briskly not to predict what the courts might do, and I thought, ooh, he'll enjoy that one long winter evening in a few years' time.