It was interesting, too, that last week Ruth Kelly, the new Secretary of State for Education, used her first interview to say two things: "Every school should have the chance to manage its own assets to become autonomous." And that she wanted to "use competition to find the best provider of new schools". Unremittingly New Labour, indeed, but merely rhetoric at this stage. The policies have already been decided by her predecessor, Charles Clarke, who gently resisted Downing Street's rush to have as many autonomous city academies as possible.More than Blair will represent, therefore, Labour's manifesto will be a compromise between radicalism and consolidation. It may seem surprising that there is such conflict within the Cabinet so close to an election But Blair has learnt the lesson of drift last time. Before the last election, he gave too little attention to working on the policies for the second term.

This time, he was determined to press for "market-based" means of achieving the party's egalitarian goals. The muffled sounds of conflict within Whitehall are evidence that the real result of the election is being decided. Blair has got less of what he wants than he pretends, but he has got much more than last time. He has pushed the New Labour envelope as far as he dared, so that the direction of change is clear, even if the pace is too slow.

The process of negotiating the compromise is almost complete. If you define an election as a moment of choice when the future course of the nation is decided, that was the general election You missed it More from John Rentoul. Alcohol good, drugs bad: I'm not sure if I'm missing something here, but that's one of the conclusions that could be drawn from the Government's new licensing law, which will allow 24-hour drinking in certain circumstances. When the legislation comes into force, serious drinkers will be able to find places to indulge at any hour of the day and night, which is, on the face of it, a daring endorsement of the proposition that prohibition doesn't work. I have a suspicion that liberalising the laws on drinking (and gambling) is supposed to make up for all the ghastly authoritarian stuff coming out of the Home Office - ID cards, restrictions on free speech and internment for foreign Muslims. It's the kind of thing that might have played well with focus groups, convincing ministers that they had found a relatively easy way of appealing to hedonistic young adults, sucking up to big business and appearing liberal, all at the same time.By the end of last week, they were beginning to wake up to the prospect of rocketing bills for policing, combined with a backlash from the public as resources are diverted into areas with lots of late-night bars and pubs.

There is already a feeling that the police don't spend enough time dealing with burglary and violent crime, and the Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, finally responded to some of these anxieties on Friday. The drinks industry may be forced to bear the cost of extra policing, she announced, while persistent offenders will be barred from pubs and bars in specified areas. Of course, this will happen only after they have made a nuisance of themselves on several occasions, swelling the crowds of drunken, aggressive revellers who vomit on pavements and make life a misery for people using night buses and other forms of public transport.I am always amazed at the resistance in this country to the idea that alcohol is a huge social problem. It has become fashionable to observe that Britain doesn't have the relaxed caf?ulture that is to be found in Continental cities, implying that we simply need to change our habits a bit - drink with meals, for instance, or consume more wine and less lager.

If the military forces deployed to spread democracy around the globe fail to behave in strict accordance with democratic values, the morality of the whole enterprise is tainted.However, it was never part of this newspaper's argument against the invasion of Iraq that US and British forces could not be trusted to respect basic human rights. On the contrary, we have the greatest respect for the professionalism and bravery of our armed forces. For that reason, as General Sir Michael Jackson seems to acknowledge, it is all the more important that their conduct should meet the highest possible standards. The fact that war is a brutal and bloody business, in which some people will do terrible things, is one reason for setting the bar for military intervention very high. But military action is sometimes justified, in which case it is important that the conduct of our troops is as disciplined as possible.Nor is it inevitable that soldiers should behave in the way that some US, British and Danish troops have done. One of the most grievous failings of President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, his Defence Secretary, was the ambiguous message about the legality of torture that they transmitted to the troops serving in Iraq, via Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.But any sense of British superiority on account of the photographs from Abu Ghraib will have been dispelled by now.