In General

Tony Blair will call an election in the UK for May. He will win. He shouldnt, since he is a cad and bounder (to say the least) and the most devious son of a flea to occupy 10 Downing Street in a while. He will win with a similar majority to the one he has now and the Liberals will gain some seats. The Tories will remain in the wilderness.

After a while, Bliar (as I call him) will step down and there will be a leadership race within the Labour Party, which Gordon Brown will win. Within a short time, there will be cries for Bring Back Tony, but these will die down and when Brown fights his election three and a half to four years later, he will lose.

Before Bliar steps down there will be a referrendum in Britain on the new EU constitution, which Blair could lose unless he lies a heck of a lot, which is likely. For example, he will say that the new constitution does not create the foundation for a Europen state, which it does; does not remove furrther sovereign powers from Britain, which it does; cede power to an unelected group in Brussels, which it does, and so on. Only by not telling the "truth, the whole truth" will he win this vote. When he concludes this, he will step down.

His legacy will be all "flash and burn" - flash because he brought some energy into No. 10 (not to mention babies) and because he has a good turn of phrase; burn because he has spent through one heck of a lot of British taxpayers money (more and more raised each year through stealth taxes) for no apparent benefit and took Britain to war for no apparent reason.

What should really happen is that Britain uses the election to make a major change. Trouble is, there are no reasonable alternatives to New Labour. Britain is stuck with them.

Ah well. Could be worse. They could have the Canadian Prime Minister, known as "Mr. Dithers".

(Seattle is off, by the way - despite working hard to arrange such a trip at short notice, the University cant get its act together for two people to meet in Seattle. They clearly need me! - see previous blog entry)