LONDON: The new political season is getting under way in Britain with the same questions that everybody had on their minds when they went on holiday: when will Prime Minister Tony Blair step down, and in what circumstances?

Back in London after three sunny weeks with his family in Barbados, Blair will be tackling hot-button domestic issues with “renewed vigour,” as his spokesman put it.

“Concerns around security, immigration and community cohesion are issues that the public demand politicians put to the top of their in-trays,” the spokesman said.

“He recognises that this is now the dominant issue in British society and one that the government will continue to respond to with renewed vigour.”

Not far from his mind will be the Middle East, which he intends to visit sometime in September in a bid to build on the fragile ceasefire and UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon.

He postponed the start of his holiday to help get a UN resolution to end fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, but stayed in Barbados when police at home thwarted an alleged plot to put Islamist suicide bombers on US-bound airliners — a coup that prompted unprecedented security and travel chaos at British airports.

But in the run-up to the annual Labour Party conference Sept 24-28 in Manchester, northwest England, there will inevitably be intense speculation as to Blair’s own future after more than nine years in power.

Many think he should declare at the conference, once and for all, when he exactly will make good on a pledge to stand down during his current term and pass the reins to his heir apparent, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.

One possibility is that he will resign in 2007, but there is also a chance that he will — true to character — resist pressure to go and hang on right until the next general, due no later than May 2010.

Rumblings of discontent amongst Labour backbench MPs and rank-and-file activists — on top of disappointing opinion polls and a police investigation into Labour Party financing — has put Blair loyalists on edge.—AFP