The Sunday Times

Eight days ago, Bertie Ahern took pleasure in telling Tony Blair that Farmleigh House - the state guesthouse in Dublin's Phoenix Park - would be no Chequers. There would be no dogs or machineguns at the door, because "Farmleigh is an Irish house", explained the taoiseach, "the people's house". It is a powerful vision and one many of us would like to share, managing as it does to combine a sense of our genius for relaxed hospitality with a new-found self-confidence to do things differently, while also conveying an impression of closeness between a people and their leaders.