IT could have been the silly season in London if it weren't for the weather. Below zero and still to plumb the depths. Tony Blair, Labour leader and by all poll forecasts PM-in-waiting, felt the chill with his breakfast egg when pollsters reported that 46 per cent of female voters were put off by his blowdried bouffant. The press seized upon this hair-raising cause celebre with howls of delight. The venerable Financial Times ran a light-hearted lead story on its front page, banishing to inner oblivion Bill Clinton's latest attempt to save the world from itself. "The blackest day," fumed Blair's chief spin-doctor, "in the FT's history." The Times devoted four pofaced quarter columns and an editorial to the perils of tonsorial laissez-faire in politics and, citing such shining examples as de Gaulle and Khrushchev, concluded that bald is best. Another clown from the Labour PR circus went on record: "The bouffant must go." Blair, helping matters not at all, issued a statement: "My problem is not changing my hair, it is keeping it." Is a 'rug-rethink' in the offing? Will the bouffant get the boot? The nation is riven as never before. And why is John Major's hirsute upper lip bristling so aggressively? Could it be because women find him more masculine than the Mop? These and other weighty issues will find resolution at the general elections, now round the corner. One counts the days.
