The Triumphant British PM Tony Blair, he of the 93 per cent satisfaction rating, was expected in Belfast next Tuesday. The all-party talks are due to open and he was to arrive declaring peace in our time, or some such. It did not go unnoticed that Tuesday was also the opening day of the Tory party conference in Blackpool and he could totally upstage the new Tory leader William Hague, whose ratings are plummeting in the other direction.
Now the visit is off. Is it really because Blair can't get back from Moscow in time? Or is it because it would be a far better ploy to leave the media spotlight on Hague and the Conservatives and show up just how hopeless their current position really is? To date much of the attention on Blackpool has centred on whether or not Hague and his fiancee Ffion Jenkins will share a bed. The pair (he is 36 and she 29) are due to marry in December and have booked a two-bedroom suite in the Imperial Hotel. Margaret Thatcher and some other old-timers, of whom there are many in the Tories, have denounced such an arrangement. So Hague and Jenkins, who hope to be viewed as trendy and modern, are caught between a rock and a hard place. They are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Share a suite, that is.