What a way to go: Panic at No 10, paranoia at the Yard

What a way to go: Panic at No 10, paranoia at the Yard

The PM is defiant. he says cash for honours will not force him from office. But the police refuse to be put off the scent and are going to extraordinary lengths to secure their evidence. Marie

Woolf and Francis Elliott report
Published: 04 February 2007

For once, Tony Blair showed a sliver of genuine emotion. He had agreed to be examined, appropriately enough, in a GP surgery in his Sedgefield constituency. When John Humphrys, interviewing the Prime Minister for BBC Radio 4's Today programme, prodded him over the cash-for-honours affair, the hurt was raw.

"I'm not going to beg for my character in front of anyone," he snapped. "I am not going to get into a situation where I am pleading for my integrity, not even in front of the public."

This was more than Mr Blair's by now familiar message of defiance. It was a howl of rage at they way in which a once proud premiership has been brought so low.

The re-arrest of Lord Levy, Mr Blair's chief fundraiser - this time under suspicion of perverting the course of justice - sent Westminster into a frenzy of speculation that charges were about to be laid after a year-long police investigation. And when it was then revealed that Mr Blair had himself been visited by detectives for a second time, the media firestorm raged more fiercely than ever.

"It can be hard to stay calm as it rages," Mr Blair told party activists at a Labour conference yesterday. "But, however buffeted, it should not change our course or our confidence."

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2214856.ece

to do what the British are doing? I look forward to seeing Blair's 'confidence' diminish in the coming weeks.

falter? Crash and burn, baby.