Is this the best we can expect? I looked down on Tony Blair's balding head yesterday and despaired of my government.
He piddled around with his glasses like a primary school teacher, but the message came from the headmaster.
We will go to war soon. "We are in the final phase," said the aide de camp of President Bush.
Our troops are on the way to Iraq, and our Prime Minister portrays anyone who opposes his fourth war in almost as many years as a traitor. It is a disgusting reversal of reality. The real patriots are those who seek peace.
But this conflict will come. For all his studied nonchalance at the Despatch Box, Tony is a Cold War warrior without a cold war. The hit will come within four weeks.
Blair loves this. For all the pretence that he loses sleep when our boys go into battle, in fact he relishes warfare - and the political gains that could flow from bloodshed.
He is like Margaret Thatcher, who gloried in the Falklands War because she knew that an election of British patriots would rescue her from political oblivion in 1983. And she was right.
Is that what we want from a Labour PM in 2003?
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