MY LITTLE TONY

What will Bambi do next? Is he a lame duck or a dangerous wounded animal?

Jon Snow, the jazzy-tied supreme of Channel 4’s news has despatched some interesting analysis in his regular Snowmail column: “Sometimes as a hack you can feel the currents of something moving; these currents seem to intersect with some of the facts that you are dealing with but you can't quite put it all together in a televisual piece. Today is such a day.

Since the British General Election, I have been talking one on one with a number of key Europeans, an Iranian, and some Americans here in London - all tops of their trees without yet having fallen out of them. Here's what I'm picking up - and I offer this as an insight into how others may be seeing things:

In what feels like the converse to the 'lame duck' view of Blair, my conversationalists reckon that of all the key European leaders they note Blair just might be suddenly and unexpectedly empowered. He has no more elections to fight and merely has his place in history to establish. At present it is blighted by Iraq, and trust, and slightly made by the re-establishment of a belief and investment in Public Services.

Chancellor Schroeder is badly winged now and facing a well nigh impossible task to get re-elected. Chirac faces serious winging as a result of a referendum 'Non' result; Berlusconi is continually becalmed by his domestic embroilments - and then there is Bush.

Into this scenario try this: Blair is today flying around the place struggling to find a way forward on Africa and Global Warming, desperately trying to forge consensus on both and getting pretty well nowhere with the Americans. His government is looking ambivalent on Europe and no one really knows, once there is a French 'No', whether he really will stage a referendum.

So here's what seems to be swirling from the perspective of my informants : Blair has a chance no other G8 leader has. Here he is going into G8 Chairmanship, and EU Presidency with nothing to lose and an unexpected amount to win.

And now, get this: On Europe, two of my sources believe his cleverest move, on the heels of a French rejection of this 'Anglo Saxon Treaty', would be to seize the moment and say to the Brits we ARE going to have a referendum precisely because this IS an Anglo Saxon Treaty. Putting our weight behind it in spite of the French rejection, naming the date and then telling the electorate you will resign after it whatever the outcome.

Then you stake your place in history on it, if you lose - ah well, you tried and you were going early anyway; if you win you redeem the position you started out with in 1997 a pro-European PM who staked his political position on it. Further they argue; see off the Americans on climate change; go for your Africa fund - and fund it by the very green mechanism of taxing airline passenger tickets and if necessary aviation fuel.

Pigs will fly? Who knows, let's see...”

Does any of this make sense? Is this insightful comment from a senior journalist in the know or the ramblings of a bored news guy?