This is no time to go on your travels, Mr Blair

If it was Cardiff at the weekend, this week it must be Accra or Lagos. Tony Blair will shortly embark on a whistle-stop tour of Africa, including Ghana and that most populous and anarchic of countries, Nigeria. In Cardiff Tony Blair railed against those who would seek to "wreck" his plans for public service reform. In Africa, pestilence, starvation and war may weigh more heavily on his mind than the creaking condition of Britain's National Health Service.

A degree of dexterity is essential for any politician seeking to bestride the international stage - and Tony Blair - that most ambidextrous of politicians may be in a better position to avoid the pitfalls being hastily dug by the media ready for his return. Even before the Prime Minister and his entourage bid farewell to London's leaden skies, the charge reads as follows: "Tony Blair should be focusing on problems at home - rather than seeking to carve a role for himself abroad."

Here is what Tony Blair must prepare for should he decide to brave the press on his return: there may be a few soft questions from friendly souls on international debt, tackling Aids and what to do about Robert Mugabe's marauding thugs. But then the heavy mob will move in. As night follows day there is bound to be another horrendous example of an elderly person left waiting on a hospital trolley. Or a London Underground signal failure leading to yet another evacuation. The questions will come thick and fast. The seeming intractability of ever putting Britain's public services right is enough to drive any political leader abroad where the adulation is louder and brickbats are absent.

The temptation for Tony Blair will be to place domestic problems in the context of Lagos, where electricity is intermittent and a cause of great rejoicing when the lights come on. But woe betide Tony Blair should he mention the dread words: "Crisis, what crisis?" Good actors know all about timing, and so do good politicians. The timing of the Prime Minister's trip is not good - in fact it is positively bad.

Few can usually fault Blair for his high-wire act, his ability, like Harry Houdini, to struggle free from almost any imbroglio in the nick of time. But just take a look at the catalogue of problems that await his return; a bitter-dispute on South West trains, sporadic guerrilla war elsewhere on the railways and a brewing conflict in the Post Office, threatening the first national strike in decades.

Britain is paying the price for a quarter of a century of under-investment in the public services - a situation that did not improve a great deal in Labour's first term. Now it is all hands on deck. "Schools and hospitals first." was the party's winning election slogan - and Labour was given an historic second chance. At last the Treasury tap was turned on, and Government Ministers are never happier when they are able to point to real improvements. In 2001 Labour won by promising to spend more on the public services. William Hague promised tax cuts and, too late, discovered that voters' priorities had changed.

So far, so good. A Government that is seen to be improving the NHS and getting the trains to run on time has every chance of being reelected. Here is what Tony Blair told The People newspaper recently: "Things are starting to get better and they will be dramatically improved. I am so confident of that, let me say this; if the NHS is not basically fixed by the next election, then I am quite happy to suffer the consequences." This explains the haste; it also explains a re-defined sense of priorities. How the Prime Minister and his Chancellor must wish they had listened more carefully to John Prescott when he was transport supremo. If only the sagacious Frank Dobson had been given more room - and more cash - for the NHS. If only ...

Even before Tony Blair jets off to warmer climes, he is making good the claim that Iain Duncan Smith may carp, but has no game plan save a desire to shave money from the public services. This is a powerful argument for it takes a while for an official Opposition - especially one as weak as this - to be asked the question: "What would you do?" But if Blair were able to marry his opened purse to fears that a Conservative government would open up the public services to wholesale privatisation, Labour could have the next election in the bag.

So why the silence as Stephen Byers rose in Cardiff at the weekend to denounce " wreckers" of public service reform - a view echoed by Blair a day later? Could it be that those delegates who then went on to pack out an anti-privatisation meeting of union leaders, believed the spin put on Mr Byers' speech by his spin doctress Jo Moore? According to journalists present, Moore's " wreckers" were the Conservatives - and the trade unions. Mr Blair and Mr Byers have identified an enemy without - and an enemy within. Dangerously, two battlefronts have been opened.

When " Sunny " Jim Callaghan jetted back from a sun-kissed G7 Summit in Guadeloupe back in 1978, journalists - some of whom had flown back with him, they immediately rounded him on. What, they wanted to know, was the Prime Minister going to do about a series of domestic crises exacerbated by the big Christmas freeze-up? The avuncular Callaghan didn't have to say "Crisis what crisis?" - The Sun did it for him. But maybe there was something in Callaghan's manner, something in his facial expression. How unlike the careful, spin-doctored Blair to risk someone saying something similar about him.