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I’m at work. I’m bored. Make me laugh.

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Trawl Rockall for:

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Blair drops policy bombshell

Tony Blair is heading for a confrontation with three of his top Cabinet ministers over a shock decision to cancel £12bn worth of construction projects in housing, health and education in favour of sudden new priorities at the Home Office.

John Prescott is said to have "gone ballistic" after his £5bn regeneration project aimed at tackling the country's endemic shortage of decent, affordable housing was put on hold. He'd already donned the symbolic hard hat and signalled the start of phase one — the demolition of 200,000 sub-standard Victorian homes across the Midlands and North, together with a simultaneous outpouring of concrete over a hitherto mysteriously undeveloped 'green belt' in the South. But the works had had hardly commenced when a sudden order from Number 10 halted the armies of bulldozers and concrete mixers in their tracks pending further instructions.

"I know what this is about," a furious Prescott briefed reporters, "he's been watching that bloody makeover where them daft conservationists claim to have brought one of them rat-infested hovels in Toxteth up to modern standards for only £20,000 according as to how they reckoned it. Well I've had a look round the so-called success story and I can tell you what a bloody con it is! I wouldn't touch their shoddy workmanship with a bargepole — they've not even put in a garage!"

Under the Prescott plan the entire district was about to be razed to the ground to make way for a vast gated estate of superbly appointed 21st century dwellings with ensuite bedrooms throughout, huge walk-in wardrobes and a mammoth double garage as standard. Moreover under the government's shared ownership scheme forty per cent of the new housing stock would be available on a specially subsidised mortgage to key workers and young, needy couples who go to the right sort of swinging parties where if you lean both ways you can strike up a productive liaison with all sorts of accommodating lenders.

With the Prime Minister's latest bolt from the blue these carefully crafted arrangements seem to have gone out the window overnight. So too, apparently, has any prospect of a new hospital being built in the UK within the lifetime of this parliament. The recently appointed Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt is said to have "thrown a ginormous wobbly" when she heard the news. Hardly a great surprise, since the minister's visionary plan to eliminate MRSA, already approved in Cabinet and prominently featured in the Queen's speech, had depended entirely on "a massive programme of new build" — knocking down all the remaining grim-looking cobwebby premises where the bugs love to breed and erecting the award-winning glass and steel citadels of medical excellence that are so much easier to wipe clean.

According to an off-the-record account from within her department, Ms Hewitt's "vitriolic outburst laced with expletives" contrasted sharply with the measured response that the mother of two and prominent judge's wife normally gives to any sudden or upsetting news. A second unnamed observer bore witness to "an awesome spectacle of incandescent fireworks" while a permanent Under-Secretary who happened to be passing likened the bespectacled minister during those brief but terrifying moments to "a seething feminine fireball of diabolical rage".

Yet the biggest bombshell was still to come. In his most surprising U-turn of all, Mr Blair also vetoed the building of any more City Academies until further notice. These are the slick US-imported centres of excellence that will overcome all the problems of failing inner-city schools if they're only given three times the usual budget, vastly superior premises and a few years to turn things around. Up until noon on Thursday their most ardent advocate apart from the Education Secretary Ruth Kelly had been the Prime Minister himself.

Knowing how badly she might take it, the New Labour leader judged that in this case at least he had better break the news in person rather than through the usual leaks. Nevertheless the robust mother of four is reported to have "hit the roof" when the full extent of the cutback was revealed.

"No, Ruth, honestly, it's not a change of heart," Mr Blair insisted in his most conciliatory tone as he tried to face down the apopleptic fury of a high-flying woman scorned. "I'm still behind you all the way. It wasn't your fault it's been such a disaster in that one particular godforsaken hole. The City Academies are an absolutely brilliant piece of engineering, especially the wonderful Unity building in Middlesbrough, whatever Ofsted says. They're a real godsend for the disadvantaged kids of tomorrow, of that I'm sure."

In the meantime however he was absolutely clear: "The kids of today will just have to make do with what we've already got for now. A more pressing need has come up. Ruth, it's not a personal slight, I had no other choice, do try to understand."

The first wave of Ms Kelly's outrage at the betrayal had passed, only to be replaced by a petulant sulk. Tony would have to work harder. "Please don't take it the wrong way," he exhorted his protégé, "It's really not meant as a vote of no confidence. It's just one of those tough decisions that as a leader I have to take."

Less sensitive though they might be, Mr Blair was quick to send out a similar message of support to his more long-standing colleagues in government. Hewitt and Prescott were doing a fine job as well. It was just that something had come up.

Yet in the end it was only the diplomatic skills of Chancellor Gordon Brown that saved the day, mollifying the distressed Cabinet ministers with the assurance that their operational budgets were "ring-fenced and totally secure". It was only the bricks and mortar, the glass and the steel, the wood and plastic, the marble, slate, sandstone and raw materials of all description that had to be diverted to where they were needed most. And when the facts were laid on the table everyone would surely agree that the unforeseen surge of demand for building materials at the Home Office had to take absolute precedence over all other claims.

This "more pressing need" had appeared on the horizon quite suddenly two days earlier when the results of a crucial pilot scheme for the introduction of ID cards, to be rolled out nationwide from 2008, were delivered to Downing Street. Allegedly the Prime Minister's brow furrowed deeper than ever before as he scrutinised the figures and took in the bottom line.

"Only 96 per cent recognition with the iris scan technique," he grimly remarked. "That's worse than we thought, Charles."

"A considerable sight worse, Tony," the Home Secretary agreed.

"But it really is a fantastic technology isn't it, scanning the iris. I've been assured it's the very latest thing, the absolute bee's knees when it comes to establishing identity in the harsh new realities of the world today."

"Oh, it's leading edge stuff, Tony, guaranteed state of the art wizardry. If you want to be absolutely sure that the chap in front of you is the bona fide possessor of an ID card then scanning the iris is the only viable way to go."

"Then there's nothing for it Charles. We've been far too complacent up to now. A four per cent failure rate — there's only one conclusion you can draw." He took a deep breath. "More than two million identity fraudsters and terrorists on the loose if you extrapolate the figures nationwide. That's almost double the number we dreamt up in our worst case scenario last November."

Charles Clarke sighed. "That's what the figures would seem to indicate," he reluctantly agreed. The former firebrand NUS leader had long since let his flesh sag into comfortable middle age and he could not help harbouring mixed feelings at the immensity of the task now in store. Truth to tell, he was beginning to regret the excess of ambition that had brought him the spoils of the third highest office in the land, within striking distance of the prime ministership itself, but at a price. Those relaxing evenings in his favourite gentleman's club on Piccadilly, ensconced in a deep leather armchair with a glass of port at his elbow as he indulged in merry intellectual badinage with a familiar coterie of erudite Oxbridge contemporaries were becoming a sorely missed thing of the past.

"We've got to bang them up!" Blair suddenly leapt to his feat and pronounced. "We need prisons, Charles and lots of them! We need them on stream by 2008 when the cards are due to roll out so we can lock up the four per cent tranche of criminal subversives who pose this abominable threat to the security of our country!"

"Four per cent of the population, that's a lot of people, Tony."

"I'd hardly call them that! Murderous, slovenly, beady-eyed moral vermin more like. They probably even smoke."

Clarke shifted his bottom uncomfortably. For some little while a pleasant thought had been floating into the forefront of his mind — how nice it would be to get away to the club, sit back in his monogrammed slippers and take a heavenly pull on the delicious Havana cigar he'd smuggled into the House on Tuesday and not had a chance to enjoy, still encased in its silver tube and burning a hole in the side pocket of his jacket.

"Incarceration's too good for them," Tony mused, "but it's the best we can do." Seeing the Home Secretary's head beginning to loll sideways he snapped his fingers. "Wake up, Charles, wake up! Time's running out — we've got to get cracking on this straightaway!"

Clarke roused himself and tried to look eager, filing away his fond reverie for a future occasion.

"All right, Tony," he said, and focused his famed grey matter on the task in hand. "This is how I see it. John's demolitions can still go ahead. It's in phase two that we need to shift the emphasis and come up with a bold new design. The new Toxteth Prison will be the biggest the world's ever seen, apart from its Green Belt sister of course. Those two between them will take up a lot of the slack. But we'll need to do more, much more."

"Now you're talking, Charles! I knew I could count on you."

The Home Secretary could not suppress a modest blush. His wide flapping ears burned brightly as they always did on occasions like this. The brief wobble was over and once more his razor-sharp intellect was wholly dedicated to the security interests of the nation. And the more he thought about it the more he warmed to the prospect of 2.4 million identity thieves and terrorists unerringly picked out and summarily despatched to the clink. An unprecedented achievement that could hardly go unnoticed by the party or the public at large. On whose shoulders then would the mantle of Tony's leadership fall? Those of the aloof Gordon Brown, who'd merely watched from his ivory tower and grudgingly stumped up the cash, or the New Labour bruiser extraordinaire who'd engineered the crime-busting miracle from start to finish, pushing it through against all the odds, the authentic new people's champion Charles Clarke?

Previously

• Blair fires broadside of flagship Bills
• Blair 'fired up and hell-bent'
• Labour secures Historic Victory™