No 10 and Home office at loggerheads

Interesting stuff in The Observer, with both No 10 and the Home Office spinning like mad:

"For those of the small group assembled in Tony Blair's study that July morning who did not know him well, it was something of an eye-opener. Banging the table with a frustrated fist, as the Home Secretary and his two startled opposition counterparts looked on, the Prime Minister was demanding to know 'why the fuck' it was so impossible to rewrite human rights legislation to allow decisive action against a terrorist threat.
'He just kept saying, "Why can't we do this?" and looking at his officials for answers,' says one source from the meeting. 'And they were just shrugging their shoulders.' By the time the meeting broke up, Blair appeared no nearer getting his answer. But those closer to him could have predicted how it would end.
Last Friday the Prime Minister decisively got his way, sweeping aside not just the caveats of his officials - plus those of his own wife, who warned last month that it was easy to respond to terror in a way that 'cheapens our right to call ourselves a civilised nation' - but the amour propre of his Home Secretary.
Hijacking at the last minute what had been planned as a much lower-key, less detailed announcement by the Home Office minister Hazel Blears, Blair last Friday unveiled a package that profoundly changed the terms of the domestic war on terror. Not only would foreign-born preachers of hate now be deported, as Clarke had already suggested, but Britain would, if necessary, rewrite the Human Rights Act to do it - a personal victory for Blair."

Whatever else this suggests, it is rather far away from the reasoned approach to policy-making that we might have expected. And what about this:

But serious questions remain over the scramble - egged on by the Sun, with its vocal campaign for holidaying MPs to come back and do something about 'lawless Britain' - to publish a full anti-terror manifesto within a month of the fatal attack
Downing Street sources insist the frenzy of last-minute phone calls between it and the Home Office were 'no more than the usual to-ing and fro-ing' expected in the middle of a crisis. But the
negotiations have exposed growing differences between the cautious civil servant's son Clarke, and his hyper-vigilant master.
Nor is it just the bombings that have strained the relationship between Clarke and Downing
Street. The whispers around Whitehall are gathering strength: that Clarke has not made a good enough job of selling ID cards, that he does not grasp the 'big picture', that he is too soft on yobbery - unlike Louise Casey, the outspoken civil servant who runs his anti-social behaviour unit. His fondness for a sociable glass of wine is tutted over, his decision to take his long-planned family holiday - although Blair and Straw are also now taking theirs - while leave is cancelled for the Metropolitan Police raises eyebrows.

This verges on the political assassination by No 10 of their own Home Secretary.