Blair's game of wait and see

Sketch
By Nick Assinder
BBC News Online Political Correspondent

Well we all got the message - we will just have to wait and see.

Tony Blair echoed his pre-summer conference

We will have to wait and see whether the prime minister is finally going to allow a ban on fox hunting in the next couple of weeks.

We will have to wait and see if he will move to finally abolish the remaining hereditary peers in the House of Lords if they continue to stymie his legislation.

And we will have to wait and see if the prime minister is bringing Alan Milburn back into frontline politics.

This was Tony Blair, back from holiday, tanned and toned and in traditional press conference form - that is, refusing to be drawn on any of the questions in the front of people's minds.

No decision

Indeed, there was a sense of deja vu about these particular proceedings.

At his last press conference before the summer everyone wanted to know if he was about to bring his friend Peter Mandelson back in from the cold - actually he had never really been out in the cold, more the lukewarm.

Last time it was Mandelson's future in question

We were told - you guessed it - that we would have to wait and see as the decision had not been made.

Just hours later the prime minister did precisely that and gave Mr Mandelson the job as European Commissioner in Brussels.

Conveniently, there was then no forum in which the prime minister could be questioned about the decision or asked to explain why he believed the former minister deserved a second resurrection.

The weeks passed, summer came and went - in the form of torrential rain - and the issue of Mr Mandelson's rehabilitation faded from the headlines.

Pure coincidence

So, that was not a question which raised its awkward head at the first press conference after the holiday.

Milburn may be on way back

Instead it was the question of whether Mr Blair was about to give Mr Milburn a job and if so, why.

Once again, the press conference conveniently fell just a day or two before the reshuffle is about to be announced.

We know that because Mr Blair said so at the beginning of the conference. It would not be Tuesday, but it would be by the end of the week, he confided.

There was, therefore, nothing more he could say about it, he added. So he didn't.