Last Wednesday, at 12 noon, the nation stood still as millions paid their respects to the victims of the South-East Asian tsunami earthquake disaster by observing a three-minute silence. We can argue about whether it did anyone any good, or whether there is any practical point to such symbolic expressions of solidarity with people whose suffering we can only begin to comprehend. All I would care to say is that if the tsunami reminded us that in spite of our technological prowess we remain powerless in the face of nature, then a dignified silence was probably an appropriately humble response to it. But meanwhile, back in the grubby undergrowth of New Labour politics, a rather less edifying spectacle was being played out. As the country fell silent, a fierce internecine squabble was under way over who should take the credit for leading the relief effort- Prime Minister Tony Blair, or Chancellor Gordon Brown. One of Mr Blair's aides apparently rang up the Treasury to find out what time Mr Brown would be making a long-planned speech on international debt relief in Edinburgh on Thursday. After learning it was 10am, Downing Street then announced that Mr Blair would be holding his monthly press conference at precisely the same time - despite having earlier denied it would take place this week. Petty? Well, yes. But as an illustration of the depths of turmoil to which the Government has sunk at the start of this election year, it can scarcely be bettered. So just how did Britain's two most powerful men manage to turn an international disaster of Biblical proportions into the latest instalment of the long-running Downing Street soap opera? Well, the origins of the spat almost certainly stemmed from Mr Blair's need to play catch-up on the tsunami issue following his initial failure to appreciate the sheer scale of the tragedy. Shortly after the event, a senior Blair aide was reported as having asked in all seriousness "whether this tsunami story would still be going by the end of the week". Mr Blair also faced personal criticism for not returning from holiday in Egypt to take charge of the Government response, despite having once broken off from a G8 Summit to deliver a moving eulogy to Frank Sinatra. Into this political vacuum, meanwhile, stepped the Chancellor, already boasting a considerable track record on Third World aid and eager to underline his internationalist credentials. In a speech in Cardiff on Wednesday, he said it mattered not that Mr Blair had been on holiday because other ministers "and myself" had been busy co-ordinating the relief effort. By the afternoon, Downing Street decided it could take no more of this, resolving to cut the Chancellor down to size by upstaging his Edinburgh speech the following day. The blunt political reality was that, having been caught napping at the start of the crisis, the Prime Minister simply could not afford to allow Mr Brown to be seen to be grabbing any more of the limelight. To those who might imagine the timing of the two speeches was merely a coincidence, I would simply say that under New Labour, coincidences like that just don't happen. As anyone who has spent more than five minutes in the Parliamentary Lobby will tell you, speeches and announcements are co-ordinated weeks in advance in the infamous "grid" drawn up by the Number 10 press office. Downing Street's excuse was that the press conference had to be at 10am because Mr Blair had to be in "the North" later that day, or more precisely, Shipley, West Yorkshire. But in response to that, one might well ask why, if this was the case, the monthly press conference could not have been held there for a change, instead of in London? What made Thursday's incident especially significant in terms of the Blair-Brown relationship is that it came on top of a whole series of other skirmishes in their ongoing private war. The bad blood has been simmering away ever since the Chancellor's election planning role was handed to Darlington MP Alan Milburn last September. Last weekend the temperature rose sharply after it emerged that Mr Blair's "blue-skies thinker" Lord Birt had drawn up a plan to hive off part of the Treasury to Mr Milburn's Cabinet Office. Mr Brown has thus far appeared unbowed, even to the extent of proposing an alternative manifesto in which improved childcare, rather than "marketisation" of public services, is the Big Idea. On the face of it, the Chancellor is playing a highly dangerous game by refusing to knuckle under. Although, as I stated in this column last week, it will probably take another 100-plus Labour majority for Mr Blair to be able to shift him from the Treasury, that is by no means an impossibility. But I am beginning to wonder whether Mr Brown would not in fact rather relish the prospect of a move, perhaps to a newly-merged Department of Foreign Affairs and International Development? Maybe he knows that the economy is likely to stall in the next couple of years and is preparing to bail out in time for a new Chancellor - Mr Milburn perhaps? - to reap the whirlwind? Either way, memories of an almost forgotten Labour era echoed down the years this week with the publication of papers from Harold Wilson's 1974-76 administration. They included the eight-page resignation statement in which the then Prime Minister set out in detail the reasons behind his sensational decision to resign, aged 60, in March 1976. Recognising that Jim Callaghan's time had come, he said he had a duty to the party "not to stay on so long that others were denied the opportunity to stand for election to the highest office". Am I being too mischievous to suggest there might just be a lesson there for Mr Blair? | 
