DESPITE the country voting hands down more than two years ago for a Labour government, why should Tony Blair, enjoying a bullet-proof 179-seat majority, start offering the also-ran Liberal Democrats a couple of seats in his Cabinet just a few months afterwards, as was revealed this week?

The secret plan, now disclosed in ex-Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown's forthcoming autobiography, was even kept from the Cabinet itself, lest some reacted furiously and others in the Labour party became bolshie over a coalition that Blair's landslide victory made completely unnecessary.

Yet does not the very existence of this scheme - and the subsequent wooing of the Lib-Dems by actually granting them places on some Cabinet committees - indicate what a cunning schemer nice Mr Blair is?

For, apart from the small benefit of having the pipsqueak Lib Dems in his pocket and buying their silence as members of the Opposition, the plotted tie-up with them in government - and the consequent democracy-defeating horse-trading deals at elections entailing them not standing against each other in seats where the Tories might otherwise get in - was obviously intended to stop the Conservatives ever getting elected again.

In short, Tony's mania for power is such that he is dreads ever losing it, even when he has a majority that is safe as houses.

Mad Roman emperor Caligula made his horse a senator.

Power-crazy Tone was prepared to do the same with a pair of Paddy's poodles.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.