Clare Short is secretly working for the Prime Minister [View All]

[windansea]

Although it is now orthodox to claim that Tony Blair wants George W Bush to win a second presidential term, the Prime Minister has also, I gather, been offering discreet advice to the Democratic contender, John Edwards. The telegenic North Carolina senator, who is the last challenger to John Kerry for his party's nomination, is highly regarded in Number 10.

For his part, Mr Edwards has turned to Mr Blair specifically for advice on foreign affairs. It remains intriguing that this should be the area of policy for which the Prime Minister has become globally renowned, his special subject in the world's political forum. When he was swept to office in 1997, Mr Blair was meant to make his mark on the domestic front. But it has proved otherwise: he has become, in the eyes of his admirers and detractors alike, a foreign policy Prime Minister.

Last week, yet again, the Iraq conflict drowned out all other political traffic. On Wednesday, the case against Katharine Gun, the GCHQ "whistleblower", collapsed, following the advice of Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, that the trial could not proceed. Mrs Gun faced jail after she leaked an e-mail which had been sent by the US National Security Agency, asking GCHQ to gather information on United Nations Security Council delegates in the run-up to the second Iraq vote.

What made the Government change its mind over the prosecution? The Crown's barrister, Mark Ellison, said there was "no longer sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction". On Thursday, Lord Goldsmith told the House of Lords a little more, though not much. "The evidential deficiency," he explained in a dizzying outburst of gobbledygook, "related to the prosecution's inability within the current statutory framework to disprove the defence raised on the particular facts of the case."

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