AMID evident panic that not enough has been done to stop British soccer thugs travelling to the Euro 2000 championships, Home Secretary Jack Straw now says the government was still looking at ways of confiscating hooligans' passports.

Looking at this and doing so are two different things, however.

And one wonders whether Mr Straw's comments amount to rhetoric when only two days ago the Home Office was saying that, with Parliament in recess until a week on Monday and the tournament due to start the following Saturday, it was too late to bring in emergency laws to strip the thugs of their passports.

But whether or not this is so, is it not a clear case of slackness on the government's part that it is only now that the risk of mayhem involving British soccer hooligans and combating them seems to have engaged its attention?

After all, the prospect of trouble in Belgium and Holland at the Euro 2000 games was trailered long ago simply by the dreadful reputation of British fans abroad -- had the Home Office forgotten the disgrace they heaped on Britain during the World Cup in France? And if any reminders were need of the potential for trouble, the vicious street battles in Copenhagen between Arsenal fans and Turks supporting Galatassaray at the UEFA Cup final earlier this month ought to have spurred even the most oblivious politician into asking whether as much as possible had been done to curb British-inspired violence at Euro 2000.

True, the government attempted last year to give courts the power to ban suspected hooligans from travelling, but its Bill to deter football disorder became law without this aspect after back-bench Tories wrecked it, fearing that civil liberties would be infringed.

And, ludicrously, this means that while a handful of thugs convicted of offences at international games can be banned from going abroad, hundreds of others found guilty of offences at domestic games cannot be stopped.

What a dangerous farce!

Even at this late stage, Mr Straw should pull out all the stops to end it, as he should have done long ago, or risk blood on the streets of Belgium and Holland next month -- and saying goodbye to England's hopes of hosting the World Cup in 2006.