Before the general election in 2005, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he would step down before the next one, due in 2010 at the latest. Since then, his days in Downing Street have been numbered. The trouble is, nobody has known what that precise number would be.

News that the leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, is seriously ill, has cancelled all appointments and temporarily handed over control of the organisation to an executive board, returns some longstanding questions to the fore. Namely: will the organisation survive him; if it does who will lead it; will the succession be peaceful; and, ultimately, is the Nation sufficiently relevant for any of those questions to really matter?

As any neocon will tell you, there is nothing quite so frustrating as trying to liberate people who just do not appreciate the freedom you have in store for them. Nor is there much joy in expressing solidarity with people who want nothing to do with you. The "historic" alliances that have been announced between workers, peasants, students, women and gays would indeed have changed history. Sadly, the vast majority were never truly forged.

Yesterday's slew of primary results from several states should give little comfort to either of the party hierarchies. For while the anti-incumbent mood claimed few scalps it made most sweat and rendered contests that should have been safe highly contestable.

Over the past six years George Bush's performance, both in office and on the campaign trail, has often been less than stellar. But his packaging has, for the most part, been exemplary. He has been projected as a man of the people and a man of action.

In the days immediately following the July 2005 terrorist attacks in London, the American press described the city as a hub of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorist cells. With headlines like “For a Decade London Thrived as a Busy Crossroads of Terror” (

Over the past six years, George Bush's performance, both in office and on the campaign trail, has often been less than stellar. But his packaging has, for the most part, been exemplary. He has been projected as a man of the people and a man of action. Never mind that he did precious little for the first 40 years of his life and that most of what he did achieve came courtesy of his father's connections. Image was everything. This was the MBA candidate who would take care of business - literally and metaphorically; the blue-blood whose folksy affectations turned blue states red; the affable jock who created a softball team called Nads in college just so that he could make banners saying "Go Nads".