Go-ahead for Crossrail

The decision is belated, but right. The Government's commitment to proceed with the Crossrail project - for which this paper has long campaigned - is excellent news for London's commuters, visitors and business community.

It is a rare example of a substantial fully-integrated transport scheme, which will link Heathrow in the west with the Isle of Dogs and Stratford - and beyond - in the east. Travellers crossing London will be able to undertake a simple journey to replace a complicated series of individual journeys.

And in opening up East London for easy access, there is the real possibility that some of the most deprived areas of the capital will be given a muchneeded stimulus to investment.

Overall, the project, including new and expanded stations along the route will create some 130,000 new jobs. Of course, the speed with which the project advances depends on political will, and on the willingness of the business community to pay for it.

As the Prime Minister makes clear today in his meeting with business representatives, private investment will be expected to cover the greater part of the estimated £10 billion cost. Quite how that amount will be funded remains to be decided in detail, but this has the potential to be an innovative example of public-private partnership.

For the Government's part, it is important, now that the project has been approved, that it should be given a swift passage through the parliamentary process. It is still not too late to hope that Crossrail can be completed in time for the 2012 Olympic Games. The prospect would give a fillip to London's bid to host the games, and would be a splendid way to unite two remarkable projects to regenerate the capital. Now that Crossrail has been approved - for which travellers will be heartily grateful-it must be advanced with all speed, to ensure that it will bring the maximum benefits to London.

Road map

Ariel Sharon's private dinner with Tony Blair tonight is a attempt by Israel to mend bridges and by Britain to maintain influence. Relations have been strained since Mr Blair endorsed the Labour Party leader Amram Mitzna in Israel's January elections, and refused to receive Mr Sharon's emissary, Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli premier blamed the Prime Minister for forcing America's pace on the so-called road map to peace. Both have now come to recognise that they need each other. Mr Blair has the ear of George W Bush and Mr Sharon must therefore keep him sweet. Engaging with Mr Sharon will allow Tony Blair to play the role of world statesman in the post-Iraq shambles. Progress in the Middle East is beyond tonight's remit. Mr Sharon sees President Bush in a fortnight and will be told to crack down on illegal settlements and bolster the Palestinian prime minister, Abu Mazen, whose position was further undermined this weekend by Yassir Arafat's assertion that he had "betrayed" his people. Mr Sharon will tell the Prime Minister that he cannot trust the apparent halt in suicide bombings while groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad feel free to resume such attacks if their demands are not met in full. Mr Blair will give him an assurance that Israel, isolated and embattled, will regain the world's favour, in particular that of a largely anti-Israel EU, by making difficult concessions. But before any headway can be made, both men must set aside their reliance on rhetoric and spin and begin to grapple with the root causes of the world's most intractable dispute - the rights of Palestinians to have their own viable state and of Israelis to live without fear of attacks on innocent civilians.

Foot at 90

When Michael Foot resigned as editor of the Evening Standard in 1943, after five years of running the paper, he wrote to Lord Beaverbrook: "Your views and mine are bound to become more and more irreconcilable. As far as this socialist business is concerned, my views are unshakable." Sixty years later, those views remain unshakeable, however unfashionable they have become. The genuine warmth with which Mr Foot's 90th birthday is being celebrated today is in recognition of a principled man who has held fast to what he believes. Romantic idealists such as Michael Foot and Tony Benn do not tend to make good politicians. There is a rigidity about their convictions which is unsuited to the daily compromises forced upon them in the hurly-burly of real life, as the Labour party discovered when it elected Mr Foot as its leader. But in his politics as in his writing, Mr Foot has always conveyed an exemplary honour and decency, and as an ideologue, marinated in the history and traditions of Parliament and the Labour movement, he remains a guiding light to the Labour left. At Tony Blair's party for him at Number 10 this evening, Mr Foot will undoubtedly look out of place. But many people who followed him into "this socialist business" will think all the more of him for that.