MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Blair to face the music

Prime Minister Tony Blair got back to work yesterday after a Caribbean vacation to face a potentially rocky autumn and a desk piled high with problems.

His own political future is at the top of the long list of thorny issues he'll have to wrestle with in the coming months. Many in Blair's governing Labour Party hope September's annual party conference will be his last, but he's given no sign he plans to leave office soon.

The party is anxious after a poll last week showed support for Labour at its lowest point in 19 years and the opposition Conservative Party reaching a level that could give it a majority in Parliament.

Terror fears and worries about militancy in Britain's Muslim community also jumped to the top of the agenda while Blair was gone when police broke up an alleged plot to bomb transatlantic planes.

"I'm home!" a cartoon in The Times showed Blair saying to his deputy, John Prescott, who is buried beneath an avalanche of newspapers with headlines detailing woes including violence in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Tory surge and the chaos caused at airports by new, hastily implemented security measures. "Did I miss anything important?"

Tension in the Mideast also is likely to keep the prime minister busy. He delayed the start of his two-and-a-half-week family holiday to press for a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah militants, and plans to continue diplomatic efforts with a trip to the region, possibly as soon as next month.