MAIL COMMENT: Labour's lemmings and a Blairite plot

Vanity, vengefulness, words dripping with venom... in the midst of an economic crisis, with jobs at risk, homes repossessed, fuel costs going through the roof and millions facing serious hardship, the explosive leak of Tony Blair's real views on Gordon Brown couldn't have come at a worse time for Labour or the country.

Loathing just leaps from every sentence of Blair's secret memo, sent to allies after the party's last conference.

He sneers at Mr Brown for wanting to end spin, accuses him of being 'vacuous' and complains that he has 'dissed' the Blairite record in government.

Mr Blair may never have intended his remarks to become public. But he must have known there was a risk they would leak, adding to the Government's difficulties. Presumably he didn't care.

Perhaps he is just getting his own back for the rows with Mr Brown when he was Prime Minister. Or perhaps he is so smugly self-satisfied that he seriously thinks his years in Downing Street  -  with all their sleaze, the corruption of standards in public life and a disastrous, dishonest war  -  should be celebrated as a great triumph.

But whatever persuaded him to disseminate such uncharitable words about his successor, Labour's civil war is threatening to become increasingly bloody, with three anti-Brown bombshells detonating within a matter of days.

First, our teenage policy-wonk of a Foreign Secretary, David Miliband  -  a close ally of Mr Blair  -  challenges Mr Brown. Then another Blairite, Stephen Byers, says some disobliging things about the Prime Minister. And now Mr Blair's views are suddenly all over the media.

So will there be an attempt at a coup this Autumn, with the nerdish Miliband wielding the knife? Or Jack Straw? Or  -  heaven help us  -  Harriet Harman?

And what about the huge problems facing Britain, as a febrile party grows ever more obsessed with the leadership?

In the latter days of John Major an undisciplined, self-serving, bitterly divided rabble of Tory MPs condemned their party to electoral disaster and years in the wilderness.

Curious, is it not, that Labour's lemmings don't seem to have learned a thing?

A rubbish policy

So now we know. In this brave new ecoconscious Britain, millions of law-abiding householders are at risk of being turned into criminals  -  and given police records  -  if they dare to put too much rubbish in their bins.

Should you go on a drinks binge and end up brawling, annoying passers-by or vomiting in the gutter, you can expect a fixed penalty fine of £80.

If you go on a shoplifting spree, the same slap-on-the-wrist punishment applies.

But for the 'crime' of overloading your (probably inadequate) bin? Or putting out a sack of 'side waste' alongside? Why, by Government decree you'll be hammered with a £110 fine  -  higher than the penalty imposed on thieves and drunken louts.

Piously, the Environment Department claims that councils need such fines 'to react to the severity and frequency of the environmental offence and ensure our streets are kept clean for all of us'.

But that, in a word, is rubbish. This is just another stealth tax.

With Ministerial encouragement, many councils save money by emptying bins just once a fortnight. So householders often have no choice but to squeeze more rubbish in, even though it leaves them wide open to town hall bin snoopers.

We pay more and more in council tax and fines, while getting less and less in return. And it just adds insult to injury when Ministers pretend that this fraud on the public is actually for our own good.