The Escape Artist

It was Boris Johnson — one of those rumpled British prodigies who manages to be both a journalist and a Conservative Member of Parliament — who best captured the disbelief of the Tory party last week. "It is just flipping unbelievable," Johnson wrote in the Daily Telegraph . His party's nemesis, he added, "is a mixture of Harry Houdini and a greased piglet. He is barely human in his elusiveness."

The escape artist, of course, was Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had managed to slip out of a political bind — make that two of them — that could...