The Conservatives held office from 1979 until 1997 and New Labour looks destined to rule from 1997 until 2009, if not longer. I say "constitutional arrangements" because almost alone among nations we have no written constitution. But since then the swing door has got stuck for long periods. This was the pattern from 1850 until 1914, from 1918 to 1939 and from 1945 to 1979. Ideally, party A remains in office for two terms at the most, and then is defeated at the polls by party B, which likewise lasts less than 10 years in power and is in its turn replaced - perhaps by party C - but at least replaced. For Britain's constitutional arrangements to work well, the swing door, which leads into government and out again, must operate.
It is in this perspective that I have been scrutinising Michael Howard's speeches since he announced that he was a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative party. Could this be true? Could the Americans sit back and watch al-Qa'ida take over the nation's oil wells? There are those in the House of Saud who take a particularly fearful view of American policy. In the past, they say, the Americans could sit in Saudi Arabia and seize the Iraqi oilfields whenever they chose to cross the border. Now they are in Iraq, they can in the event of a revolution just drive in the other direction and seize the oilfields in northern Saudi Arabia, leaving Riyadh and other cities to whichever Arabian ruler takes control
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More from Robert Fisk. Bin Laden's messages are still laced with venom for the House of Saud. Indeed, his original and still most important aim is to do what Laurent Murawiec demanded: to take the "Saudi" out of Arabia.Now it looks as if his erstwhile protectors have abandoned him when his side of the royal family are in far greater peril.He claimed that Saudis were seen by other Arabs as "lazy, overbearing, dishonest, corrupt" and that they are "active at every level of the terror chain", from financier to foot soldier. There persists in Washington the suspicion that the Saudi royal family is still trying to compromise with the religious hierarchy and with its al-Qa'ida enemies. The Pentagon and the CIA, for example, remain angry that Saudi clerics allegedly named on one of Bin Laden's videotapes as supporting the 11 September attacks are still preaching freely in Saudi Arabia. Far more damagingly, they even gave secret permission for 200 US combat aircraft at the base to fly 700 combat missions over Iraq daily.The Jordanians suspect the bombing of their embassy in Baghdad this summer was retaliation for a secret military operation in which 26 US F/A-18 fighter bombers flew missions from a Jordanian air base to bomb Iraqi air force facilities.