Matt Price

Canberra John Howard is defying political gravity. After nearly ten years as Prime Minister of Australia he has no serious challengers. Tony Blair, by contrast, hobbles along performing an excellent impression of a fellow in the crippled poultry phase of his leadership. At 66, Howard is 14 years older than Blair. He has served a year longer in office, and he has won four elections to Blair’s three. You might think that Howard would be at least as burdened by scandal, disillusion, infighting, ennui and fatigue as the younger man. But you’d be wrong. Indeed, Howard is being encouraged by many in the Liberal party — Australia’s equivalent of the Conservative party — to soldier onwards and upwards to a fifth campaign in 2007.

Sydney First, a macabre coincidence. The last Ashes series, the eighth straight pitiful England capitulation, started days after the Bali bombing which killed 88 Australians and 26 British travellers. Now, as the Lord’s Test begins, London reels from the atrocious targeting of morning commuters. The recent bombings have evoked enormous and deserved admiration for stoical Londoners. Down in the convict colony, headline writers and cartoonists have utterly exhausted the clichés depicting ye-olde-Dart-never-surrender-stiff-upper-lipped-British-bulldog spirit. Still, as cricketing hostilities resume, you’d think there’d be scant room for sentiment.