Tony Saves the World Again

The Guardian's David Adam and Patrick Wintour report that the Vicar of Downing Street "believes he is close to persuading George Bush to accept an ambitious plan to bring the world's greatest polluters into international partnership to fight climate change for the first time". His reverence "wants an agreement before President Bush leaves the White House", which raises the unhappy possibility that the Vicar will continue to obtrude himself upon the international scene, a gambolling peripatetic puppy in a little green jacket (perhaps emblazoned with the corporate logos of Shell, Exxon Mobil, Halliburton and all those other splendid people), humping George W Bush's leg until next November while yapping at India and China. His reverence apparently believes that "by placing a premium price on carbon ... business has a greater incentive to invest in carbon-free energy", rather than in propaganda by climate-change sceptics. The Vicar of Downing Street's rigorously realistic habits of thought have not, it would seem, been undermined by his recent decision to ascend to a higher calling than politics.