Paper Monitor
11:00 UK time, Friday, 1 September 2006
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
So when is Tony Blair going to resign? After months of speculation, the Guardian has been taking soundings from the prime minister's friends and tells us it's next summer. So that settles it. Only over at the Times, matters are less cut-and-dried. It's been talking to the big kahuna himself and the verdict is - not telling. Paper Monitor finds itself wondering what does his contract of employment say about the length of notice he's obliged to give. Anyone who's been in a senior job for almost 10 years would normally be expected to serve out several months, while the employer tries to fill the vacancy.
No such luxury for President Bush - at least if the plot to Channel 4's latest controversial offering - Death of a President - were to come true. The film portrays a fictional assassination of the US president - a plot that has outraged some Americans. Not that the Daily Mail gives a stuff, asking "What if it DID happen?" Historian Mark Almond - no, not that one - is on hand to speculate. And it's not a pretty scenario, as America is imagined to descend into an authoritarian regime, and fight a bloody war on Iran. The sentence "Cheney's re-election campaign in 2008" will send shivers down some spines.
But here, at least, is someone prepared to stick his neck out and put a date on the end of Mr Blair's term in office, although Brownites won't like it one bit. "When Tony Blair stepped down in 2009 to join President Cheney's Anti-Assassination Commission, it was David Cameron who won the election."
The 
