After all, why should he? Last night I have listened to Tony Blair's latest press conference in which he resorted to the same blood libel by arguing that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is responsible for the rise of suicide bombers. Since the first terrorist group to make use of suicide bombers were the Tamil Tigers, his analysis like that of Abdallah is based on a shared instinctive scapegoating of Jews. After all, he, like other EU leaders, were handed a major defeat by the electorate which given the loses of Schroder and Chirac cannot be conveniently blamed on the war in Iraq. What happened? Here I agree with Blair's analysis - voters want their leaders to stop their infighting and focus on their major domestic conundrum. The baby boomer generation is retiring and the money is not there to secure them a retirement as comfortable as that of their elders. Given the paucity of the powers of the European parliament (it is almost as powerless as most Middle Eastern ones!), voters felt safe in using the elections to send their governments a message.