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One of the drawbacks of living in London four days a week is that I can’t buy a copy of the Daily Post. I have to rely on the online edition, which, although excellent, does not carry the paper’s opinion columns.

My attention has therefore only just been drawn to this week’s offering from the incendiary pen of David Banks.

Musing on the abduction of Madeleine McCann, and having expressed the pious, if perfunctory, hope that she will be found safe and well, Banks goes on to say:

“I do wonder that had she been the daughter of a single mum from a sink estate, rather than a GP and a cardiologist, whether the press would have been quite so understanding of the decision to leave her with her two-year-old brother and sister while they went for a meal, albeit checking the children every half hour.

“The presumption seems to be that because they are educated, wealthy professional people, their actions are beyond reproach.”

There is a time and a place for everything. And if Banks doesn’t understand why his comments are revoltingly inappropriate, pity help him.

In the wake of Tony Blair’s departure, the official Labour Party website hints at what the future may hold.

Yesterday it was emblazoned with a bright red banner bearing the words: “New Labour, New Britain” – a slogan Tony himself dreamed up with Peter Mandelson.

Today, all has changed. The banner is purple and the “New Labour” strapline has vanished.

Figuring prominently on the page are Tony and Prescott, grinning into camera, and looking for all the world like Stan and Ollie just before they turn and shuffle off into the sunset.

Who, we must ask, has taken the decision to dull down the website and replace the jazzy, scarlet scheme with the colour of mourning? It can only be Gordon!

What a dour, joyless, future we have to look forward to under the dour, joyless, son of the manse!

The walk to the House this morning was made infinitely more tedious by the performance of Neil Kinnock, delivering his political eulogy on Tony Blair to a bored-sounding Jim Naughtie. I deeply regretted having my new pocket DAB digital radio switched on and regretted even more that my hands were full and I couldn’t turn it off.

Kinnock must surely be the most long-winded party leader ever. He doesn’t use one word when ten will do. Thank heaven the British people saw sense and rejected him in 1992; I don’t think anyone could have stood five years with him at the helm.

Up betimes, as Pepys used to say, and looking forward to what promises to be a very significant day in politics. Tony Blair is to make a speech in his Sedgefield constituency in which he will announce the timetable for his retirement from office.

Frankly, it’s not before time. It has long been obvious that Blair is still there only because he wanted to see his ten years out. He is like an old cricketer who, having achieved an obscure record in Wisden, is still taking to the field long after he should have hung up his boots.

He should have gone at least twelve months ago. The last year has been nothing short of embarrassing, dominated by the appalling mess that is Iraq and the cash for honours scandal.

His performances in Parliament have been patchy, too. Yesterday, he was dreadful. David Cameron tore him apart at PMQs, asking six questions in succession, and concluding with the devastating taunt that Blair was leading a “government of the living dead”, most of whose members had either announced their resignation or were due for the chop when Gordon Brown takes over. Apart from one rejoinder about Oliver Letwin, Blair had nothing to say. He looked stressed, flustered and bad tempered. Above all, he looked tired. In the Commons, these things matter. His back benches gave him little support.

Still, today will be hugely significant. The beginning of the end of the reign of the longest-serving Labour Prime Minister ever. That is a matter of no small importance.

I don’t like Tony Blair. I think his government has been bad – very bad indeed – for this country. And yet, on a personal level, I do have a degree of admiration for him, most particularly for his extraordinary resilience.

I was delighted by the news that the European Commission has conceded that the UK may continue to use imperial measures. Previously, dual marking of goods in imperial and metric was to be phased out in 2009. Now pounds, ounces, pints, gallons, feet and yards will continue to be used indefinitely.

I was always intensely opposed to the plans to force metric measures onto an unwilling British public and appalled at the spinelessness of the Government in its failure to stand up to the Commission on the issue. The prosecution of the five “metric martyrs” in 2000 for selling produce in pounds and ounces was a shameful episode.

One of the “martyrs”, Steve Thoburn of Sunderland, died in 2004. A posthumous pardon would appear appropriate.

Attended an address to mark the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade given to both Houses of Parliament by the former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, in the sumptuous Gothic surroundings of the Royal Gallery.

It was a memorable but sobering occasion. Mr Annan was introduced by the deputy Prime Minister, in the absence of Tony Blair in Belfast. He spoke softly and gently, yet with great passion. He reminded us that, although the slave trade was formally abolished in the UK and its empire two centuries ago, other forms of slavery continue to exist.

We all know about the vile people-trafficking trade and are quick to condemn it, but, as the former Secretary-General reminded us, we prefer on the whole not to worry too much about where the everyday products we enjoy come from, and at what human cost. The computer on which I am typing this post was made in China. What conditions, I wonder with some unease, did the workers who produced it endure?

These are questions we should all, if we were in any real sense honest, ask about everything we consume, but we tend not to. We salve our consciences by buying fair trade chocolate and coffee, but, mostly, that’s about as far as it goes.

The human condition has, on the whole, improved since 1807, but the battle is by no means won. Nor will it be until we develop the courage to ask searching questions of ourselves and our own motives and to give honest answers to them.

It’s bank holiday, but I am working, catching up on the backlog that has built up astonishingly quickly over the couple of days in which I was involved in the Welsh Assembly election. My inbox is full of e-mails from happy constituents delighted at our gain in Clwyd West and the general bad news for Labour.

I return to London this afternoon, full of anticipation at what is likely to be a lively political week. Tony Blair will probably announce his resignation on Wednesday or Thursday and then the fun will start. John Reid has already bottled it and announced that he won’t oppose Gordon Brown; instead he intends to return to the back benches, probably glad to be rid of the nagging toothache that is the Home Office. Gordon is virtually assured of becoming Labour leader after he has brushed aside Michael Meacher, John McDonnell and anyone else sufficiently silly to put his head above the parapet.

I wonder what is going through Gordon’s mind right now? He has, of course, waited a very long time for the top job; under the deal struck with Blair over dinner at the Granita restaurant in 1994, he should have taken over some years ago – hence the brooding bitterness. He might, therefore, be expected to be elated by the knowledge that the office he has coveted for so long is finally within his grasp.

However, I suspect that it is far more likely that Gordon views his imminent preferment “with an auspicious and a dropping eye”. The early weeks, or even months, of his premiership are likely to be dominated by what may turn out to be a constitutional crisis in Scotland, where the wily Alex Salmond is doing his best to turn the slender SNP lead into a platform for power at Holyrood. That was the last thing Gordon needed. What he wanted was a clear run so that he could deliver 100 dynamic days, when he could put his own stamp on government; it seems he won’t get it.

Nicolas Sarkozy’s success in the French presidential election is also unlikely to please Gordon. Sarkozy has made it clear that that he intends to bring the issue of the EU constitution back onto the political agenda, and he has the mandate to push vigorously for it. The constitution has for months rested comfortably in the long grass; Gordon would have been quite happy for it to remain there.

Politics never cease to fascinate, nor do they lack irony. Gordon Brown has taken years to shin his way up the greasy pole; it now appears that that the view from the top will be bleaker than he had imagined.

According to Guido, Peter Hain’s campaign for the Labour deputy leadership has been budgeted at a whopping £89,000.

Of this, £5,325 has been earmarked for the snazzy Hain4Labour website. This features pictures of a relaxed-looking Hain in cool dude mode, complete with loosened tie, and a biography which, strangely enough, makes no mention of Peter’s lengthy stint as president of the Young Liberals – an inexplicable omission.

The site also includes a number of sycophantic endorsements of Aga from a variety of Labour great and good, including Shaun “Jeeves” Woodward, MP for St Helens South, who gushes:

“On a visit to Soweto we met a B&B owner who said she owed her business success to Peter Hain. ‘He really cared so much about the people here and really wanted to help.’ That sums Peter up for me.”

Presumably she has Sky Sports in her bedrooms.

It was a singularly bad night for the Lib Dems in Wales and the rest of the country. They made no progress whatever in the Welsh Assembly and their leader there, Mike German, is likely to be usurped, although it is hard to see which of their Assembly Members could have made a better fist of it, given the unpropitious circumstances that prevailed.

Their principal problem is Menzies Campbell, whose leadership of the national party is appallingly and embarrassingly inept. In England, the Lib Dems lost control of ten councils, with a net loss of more than 250 councillors. Poor Ming is such an atrociously bad leader that he makes Charlie Kennedy look like Bismarck.

The irony is that in both Wales and Scotland, the Lib Dems may end up helping the failed Labour administrations limp on for another term. If they do decide to go into coalition, formal or otherwise, it will rebound on them at the general election, as voters register their disapproval of their short-termist opportunism. Indeed, the Libs’ meltdown at that election may even surpass that of Labour.

Have finally recovered after election night. Was awake from 6.00 am Thursday until 9.00 pm Friday and spent most of that time ingesting unhealthily large quanities of caffeine. Crashed out and had 9 hours’ sleep, after which I felt a lot chirpier.

Yesterday’s papers were full of interesting analyses of the results, carried over into the Sundays. Today’s Sunday Times contains a report of the findings of the psephologists Colin Rawlings and Michael Thrasher that the Conservatives are on course to win the next general election, with a majority of 54 seats, based on Thursday’s poll.

Certainly, the results are encouraging. The Conservatives have now virtually obliterated Labour in the south of England and are making good progress in the north. We have taken control of northern councils such as Chester and Blackpool and large numbers of seats in towns such as Bolton and Bury.

In Wales, Labour has been pushed back to its fastness in the former Glamorgan, with just a handful of seats remaining in the north-east. We were very unlucky not to win Vale of Clwyd and Delyn, and, given the way the tide is continuing to flow, we have every chance of taking both those seats at the general election.

Labour is now very close to hitting bedrock, if it has not already hit it. In the circumstances, Tony Blair’s comment on the election results was nothing less than bizarre. He remarked that they were a “perfectly good springboard to win the next general election”. Bedrock is not noticeably springy and one wonders just how far the bunker mentality has taken hold of him.

Later this week, it is likely that Blair will emerge from the dust and debris of the election debacle, announce his resignation and set the timetable for his departure from the political arena. His long-sought legacy is now clear. It will be a poisoned chalice, handed over in a very orderly fashion to the luckless Gordon Brown.

Up all night at the count in Llandudno, when Clwyd West’s Conservative candidate, Darren Millar, won the Assembly seat with a comfortable majority of 1,596 over Labour.

Darren fought an excellent, positive campaign, focusing on the issues that matter to the people of this constituency, including hospitals, schools and police funding. The Labour campaign, by contrast, was notable for its vitriolic and sustained personal attacks on our man. It was a disgraceful campaign, the worst I have known in many years as a political activist. I hope never to experience its like again.

Fortunately, the voters of Clwyd West were clearly turned off by Labour’s tactics and decisively rejected their candidate.

I look forward to working closely with Darren for the benefit of all the people of this constituency.

Knowing Peter Hain’s footballing allegiances, I refrained from looking too pleased about Liverpool’s excellent win last night when I faced him today across the despatch box.

In victory, magnanimity.

Welsh questions today. I raise the issue of the subsidy paid by the Welsh Assembly Government toward the cost of the new Cardiff – Anglesey air service, which starts next week.

The subsidy amounts to £800,000 per annum, or over £170 per passenger per return flight. I’m not sure that this is brilliant value for taxpayers’ money. The Government suggests the service will appeal to businesspeople, but I am pretty sure that they would not object to paying the full commercial rate, given that the alternative is a five hour journey each way by car or an endurance test of similar duration by rail.

Peter Hain tells me, effectively, that I should welcome the subsidised service with open arms. I intend to reserve judgment. Previous north – south air services have failed and I want to review the whole issue in a few months’ time. My concern is that the flights may be half empty and cater mostly for civil servants and politicians.

By the way, £170 would pay for three return flights, tax included, from Cardiff to Prague.

Peter “Aga” Hain appears to be attracting the smart money in his bid to become Labour’s deputy leader when Prezza resigns with Tony in the aftermath of the 3 May bloodbath.

According to the latest edition of the Register of Members’ Interests, Aga’s campaign has recently been boosted by donations from Messrs Bill Bottriell, Christopher Campbell and Robert Davies, all of London. Mr Bottriell is apparently a “millionaire entrepreneur” and Mr Campbell former chairman of British Shipbuilders. Mr Davies is something of a mystery.

Perhaps all this largesse will enable Aga to pay someone to write up his blog. So far it has only two entries, the last written on 27 March.