Fun and games in Sweden with just a week to polling day. The Liberal Party which is part of the opposition coalition trying to wrest power from the Social Democrats and their fellow travellers on the left…the Socialists and the Green Party…has been caught hacking into the Governing Party’s campaign computers seventy eight times. Oops!

A few hundred miles to the south Belgian police have foiled a neo-Nazi terrorist plot. Lieve Pellens a spokeswoman for the Federal Prosecutor talks of a splinter group to Vlaams Belang…the Flanders Freedom Fighters…with the splendid name of Bloed Boden Eer & Trouw…Blood, Soil, Honour and Loyalty, infiltrating the Belgian army and stashing away weapons for its ‘anti-Semitic and xenophobic’ agenda.

Meanwhile on the other side of the pond Bush’s speech writers have come up with Islamic Fascism as their latest weapon in their War of Words with the Democrats.

But the best political show of the week is in my own backyard. With British troops dying in Iraq and Afghanistan on a Fool’s Errand and terrorists plotting mayhem on the Home Front the UK Governing Party has been indulging in a demented outbreak of internecine warfare.

In the dog days of summer just 16 months after a General Election and with Parliament in recess until October the Labour Party has decided that the time is right for palace revolution. To hell with the governance of Britain all they are worried about is the date of the Prime Minister’s departure.

Blair will have to be dragged kicking and screaming out of Downing Street to prevent him notching up his decade as Prime Minister. He was always going to be gone before next autumn. So the effect of this week’s shenanigans is to put the British Government on hold. Not so much a lame duck as a dead one. Why? Whose purpose is being served?

This clumsy all-consuming coup d’état has been taking place within the padded cell of the Westminster Asylum without any reference to their paying public. Various species of political pond life have paraded across the nation’s screens and the radio airwaves posing as statesmen and passing sentence in the most sanctimonious and self-serving terms. This Political Soap Opera has three principal players: Tony Blair, Gordon Brown…and David Cameron.

Modern Prime Ministers have no real interests outside politics. In the 19th century Lord Derby translated the Iliad, Benjamin Disraeli wrote novels, Gladstone buried himself in Horace and Lord Salisbury busied himself in his chemistry laboratory at Hatfield House. Modern Career Politicians have only their property portfolios to fall back on.

After a lifetime clambering up the greasy pole a modern Cabinet Minister is cast into existential darkness when they depart office. One moment you are the supreme dispenser of patronage, surrounded by courtiers and supplicants anxious to touch the hem of your garment. Your authority is enormous. You say to a man go and he goeth, come and he cometh. But out of office you become essentially an object of curiosity.

You can join the lecture circuit and play to American Matrons in Florida, Japanese Bankers in Tokyo and Russian Oligarchs in Moscow and be paid handsomely for it. But reminiscing about the time when you mattered can give little inner satisfaction.

The trouble with Gordon Brown is that every time it has come to the crunch he has bottled out. He has always commanded enough support in the Labour Party in Parliament and in the Cabinet to block any Blair measure. He could have raised his standard against the Iraq War. He didn’t. He could have vetoed any number of contentious issues. He hasn’t. Instead he has let Blair plough ahead in the fervent hope that it would all go pear-shaped and hasten his demise.

A nod of Brown's head could have brought this week’s self-destruction by the party to a halt. We are told that nothing happens domestically without it passing across the Chancellor’s desk. Yet whenever there is trouble Gordon Brown goes AWOL. Then there are the reputed psychological flaws. Do leopards really change their spots?

Meanwhile waiting in the wings are Messrs Straw,Prescott, Milburn, Johnson, Hain & Clarke and the monstrous regiment of Labour Party Women . While behind the scenes are Blair's Babes and the formidable Cherie Blair. Is she going to let her husband slip away humiliated and despised?

Besides Blair is no coward. He is a street fighter…when he has to be. And he remains an enormous asset to the Labour Party because he wins elections. Immature Labour MPs forget that Governments are usually behind in the polls. Only one election matters…the General Election.

Which brings us to Cameron and his Old Etonian Shadow Cabinet. Charles Kennedy, the leader of the Liberal Democrats…like Winston Churchill…has been an alcoholic all his political life. His minders kept an eye on him and hid him out of sight when necessary. But most the time he did a good job.

But suddenly when Cameron is launched into the leadership of the Conservative Party behind a campaign reminiscent of Tony Blair’s royal procession two decades earlier, a ferocious attack is launched on Kennedy and off he goes. Barely had the dust settled before the dogs were unleashed on Tony Blair with the media relentlessly pursuing its prey. The chief beneficiary...David Cameron.

Tony Blair might sack Gordon Brown when he returns from Israel after aligning Government Middle East Policy with the Labour Party instead of the Neocons. But I wouldn’t advise anyone betting on either. More significantly 44 million English are tired of being lectured at by 4 million Scotch Gits. A Scotch-led Labour Party is now unelectable.