As if the Prime Minister didn't have enough on his plate at present, he now has to worry about the spectre of a Ken Livingstone clone in the White House. The likelihood of a Howard Dean US presidential candidacy has, according to the Guardian, caused alarm in Downing Street that it will create tensions in the 'formidable' transatlantic Democrat/Labour alliance. As the well-briefed Patrick Wintour reports, 'one ally of the Prime Minister has suggested that he would prefer anyone but Mr Dean as president, although in public Mr Blair will be careful to ensure Labour and Downing Street are seen as neutral in the Democrat race.' The worry is that Dean will fail to unseat President Bush because he is... well, off the wall. Or to put it more politely, the US equivalent of the anti-west, unreconstructed leftism that Blair and his great buddy Bill Clinton repudiated and which is embodied in the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone.

Of course, Blair's problem this side of the Atlantic is the opposite one, that Livingstone is all too likely to be re-elected as London's mayor. Hence his breathtakingly cynical act in declaring that Red Ken is now a reformed character and turning him back into a Labour candidate at a click of his fingers. How irritating for him -- and no doubt for queasy Democrats --that he can't peform such tricks of legerdemain across the pond.