And, for all his extravagant ways with the federal budget, Mr Bush prides himself on being a frugal man. He even – claim his aides – turns off the lights when he leaves an empty room.This moral certainty may be the key to understanding Mr Bush’s stance on Iraq. He believes toppling President Saddam is the right thing to do, and hang the precise reasons, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, remain elusive. Mr Bush does not even seem to care what it might do to America’s standing in the world, or to its relationship with its allies.”At some point, we may be the only ones left,” Mr Bush is quoted in another recent book, Bush At War, by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post And he adds: “That’s OK with me We are America.”.

As Tony Blair nursed his cold in the back of an armoured Jaguar on the way to his flight home after addressing the Welsh Labour conference last Friday, he was passed a note. The Rhondda Constituency Labour Party, deep in the traditionally socialist heartland of South Wales, had concluded after a long discussion that it was confident that whatever decisions he took, they would be the right ones. But then Mr Blair has never been overly diverted from his own judgement by the views of the party he leads.That isn’t to say that he is particularly belligerent about it even in private. He will repeatedly tell anyone who asks that he has made a “judgement call” about Iraq and that he respects and understands the views of those, including some of his friends, who don’t. He is also fond of pointing out that while some of his opponents are long-time Blair admirers, some of his supporters are usually critics, among them the MPs Ann Clwyd, a long-time campaigner against Saddam Hussein and the fiercely independent-minded Andrew McKinley.

He rarely, if ever, comes on in private as a warmonger, pointing out to colleagues that while everyone remembers he persuaded to Bill Clinton to threaten a ground invasion against Slobodan Milosevic during the Kosovo war they tend to forget that it was also he who earlier advocated giving the Serbian President an extra two months to see sense before the negotiations at Rambouillet broke down and the bombing started.He insists he was concerned about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and told George Bush so as long ago as February 2001, long before 11 September. And he still thinks that if from January – in the wake of Iraq’s 12,000-word declaration denying any possession of weapons of mass destruction – the international community had acted in unison, disarmament could have happened without war.So Mr Blair isn’t losing much sleep about the turbulence in his party, a turbulence which could become much more intense if he follows President Bush into Iraq without the sanction of a new UN resolution. The sheer volume of diplomatic contacts, compounded by the number of time zones they daily traverse is, of course, costing him sleep. But although he is not a consistent four-to-five hours a night Prime Minister, as Margaret Thatcher was, he can do without much sleep for long periods. As his premiership faces its most decisive test, what frequently does cost him rest is baby Leo, who rarely sleeps through the night, and to whom he has somehow managed, amid everything, to remain a closely bonded parent.So how does he relax? He is has become something close to a fitness fanatic, working out or playing tennis nearly every day He famously plays the guitar.