TONY Blair is embroiled in a bitter dispute with the Metropolitan Police over arrangements for quizzing him about a long-running investigation into the cash for honours scandal.
Downing Street is resisting police requests for the Prime Minister to make a high-profile trip to New Scotland Yard for an official interview over claims that honours were offered in return for multi-million-pound loans to the Labour party.
The i
nterrogation is expected to take place within the next month, a senior government aide revealed last night.
The Blair camp is believed to have asked for officers to make a more discreet visit to Downing Street for the face-to-face session.
But a police source claimed the softly-softly approach would be "totally out of line" with the conduct of the inquiry so far.
While Blair does not believe he will be placed under arrest, police are insistent they are given the chance to quiz him.
However, Labour Treasurer Lord Levy was arrested when he arrived at his local police station last month for a pre-arranged appointment with detectives.
"There is a real concern that they want to avoid a public spectacle where Blair will be taken from Downing Street and whisked down to the police HQ," a government source said last night.
"They don't see why the Met can't just slip into Downing Street on a given day, to prevent it being a media circus, but they seem to be sticking to their guns, and saying they can't guarantee it."
The nagging worry over the continuing police inquiry is one of a raft of concerns facing Blair as he returns to his desk following his three-week summer holiday this weekend.
Amid lingering complaints about his approach to the crises in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, and Labour's slump in the polls, pressure is also growing on the Prime Minister to set his departure date, amid concerns among ministers that the government is "drifting".
Europe minister Geoff Hoon stoked the discontent yesterday when he conceded voters were starting to see Tory leader David Cameron as a serious alternative to Blair.
But the Prime Minister now intends to seize back the agenda by driving forward a series of new initiatives at home and abroad, designed to cement him into Number 10 - and freeze Gordon Brown out.
Blair's aides last night confirmed that they had been ordered to prepare more than a dozen new pieces of legislation for the Queen's Speech this autumn, which will set out the blueprint for Blair's legislative programme for the coming year.
The package, including three crime bills, House of Lords reform, and reform of the CSA will form the domestic element of his two-pronged battle plan.
Aides insisted he was "hell-bent" on travelling to the Middle East in a bid to restart the peace process, chiefly through reviving the moribund "road map to peace".
But the plans effectively kill off any suggestion that Blair will "go quietly" and make way for Brown within the next few months, despite mounting calls for him to quit - many from within his own party.
Despite hopes that he might offer a hint as to the timetable for his departure, the PM is expected to return to the "I go on and on" theme during his keynote speech to the Labour party conference late next month.
Blair's counter-offensive will begin this week with a lecture on social exclusion, followed by a speech to the think tank Progress, and an appearance before the Trades Union Congress next month.
A Downing Street insider said the issue of social exclusion would be the main theme of the speeches, and of Blair's next phase of government.
He added: "He has obviously signalled he's going to give the Middle East peace process a push, but he has a very clear domestic focus as well.
"The work we have done in getting people back to work and out of poverty over the past few years has shown that there is a hard core of hard-to-reach families across the country that we must find ways of helping."
Blairite loyalist Tessa Jowell yesterday underlined Blair's intention to stay in office, insisting he was determined to tackle the problems of terrorism and migration. She said: "Whether it's under Tony Blair or under a new leader, the policies will remain the same, the threats will remain the same and the challenges will remain the same."
Scotland on Sunday understands the draft Queen's Speech outlined to colleagues by Leader of the House Jack Straw contains 13 bills, including measures on criminal justice, criminal trials and organised crime, further education, consumer protection and the switchover to digital broadcasting.
But further anti-terror measures are also under construction and ministers are preparing to push through proposals to allow evidence gathered through secret phone-taps to be used in court for the first time.
The move has been opposed by the government for several years, in the face of support from prosecutors and even civil rights groups.
But Home Secretary John Reid is preparing to do a U-turn, in a bid to make it easier to prosecute alleged terror plotters.
It has now emerged that the main objection of the security services has been the demands the change would make on their resources, rather than any concerns about disclosing their confidential tactics.
Reid will sanction the change in line with the expected findings of a review of "possible legal models for evidential use of intercept", which is due to report to him in November.
