Carole's clout: beyond lip-gloss

Peter Foster has sold his memoirs for a large sum - some say almost £ 500,000. Those rushing to buy the book are unlikely to be very interested in Mr Foster. What has added the noughts to his cheque is the fact that his ex-girlfriend occupies a position of great influence over the Prime Minister's wife - and continues to do so, in spite of the "Cheriegate" affair.

While Foster threatens to tell all, Carole Caplin does not go away. It is not often that Marie Claire magazine must be read as a political commentary on our times, but the latest issue will be essential reading for future historians. On the Prime Minister's bed sits Carole Caplin, applying lip-gloss to Cherie. Miss Caplin holds one finger aloft towards the camera. It is a hierophantic gesture, symbolising authority. Her long hair falls over her shoulders. She could be an Inca cult priestess. Cherie, at her side, looks like a junior postulant to Carole's order.

Photographs often tell us more about political characters than yards of newsprint. The other image that will stay in our minds is that of a panic-stricken Tony Blair squatting in China amid an army of tiny statues, as if it were an image of his army of parliamentary lobby-fodder. His face looks miles away. He is thinking sad thoughts on the day after the suicide of Dr David Kelly. What those thoughts were, none of us can say, but the saddest one that can ever pass through the mind of a successful-politician is, "My time is up".

At his side is "the only real friend Tony has left", as one paper has called her: his wife, Cherie. She is not squatting, like Tony, but holding his shoulders, as if without her he would topple over. That is probably now the literal truth about the PM. Alastair Campbell is on the way out. Mandy is gone. Derry Irvine is one with Nineveh and Tyre. There remaineth yet these three, Cherie, Tony and Carole, and the greatest of these is Carole.

When he was first elected, I thought Blair was like all the other pushy prefects at school. I thought he would be bossy, interfering, ineffectual, and he has been all these things. What no one could have predicted was how odd he is. If you think of all the people who could be making a respectable stab at running the country, and influencing the Prime Minister of the day, it surely defies belief that Carole Caplin should be there at the centre of things.

One day the story will be told. At the moment we only have the pictures. Governments run out of steam, or die, months or even years before the electoral process gets rid of them. We all recognise that in the course of the David Kelly affair the Blair government has come apart at the seams, but it might be years before we see the back of it. Few things are so entertaining in a democracy than to watch our elected representatives running around like beheaded chickens. Whatever nonsense they speak now, we know Carole will have glossed the lips first.