With Blair’s failed prime ministership heading for what looks like an ignominious end, Matthew Ancona sums up where things are leading, and ends up as follows:

Herman Melville’s great short story, Bartleby, describes a strange copyist who works in a lawyer’s firm, refuses to leave the premises when sacked, and eventually lurks around the office as an emaciated vagrant. Bartleby’s haunting mantra to all those who beg him to go, or to see sense is: “I would prefer not to.” That’s Tony Blair. He knows he must go. Everyone tells him he must go. He has even promised to go. He must absolutely go before Sunday September 23 when Labour’s 2007 conference opens in Bournemouth. But he would prefer not to.