Leader: What was Blair really doing in California?

Tony Blair has kicked off his summer recess with a trip to California to find out just what the UK could be doing to emulate the success of Silicon Valley's high-tech industry.

The first step, cynics might suggest, would be to vote in a Prime Minister who has the first clue about technology and the massive benefits it delivers to both people and businesses.

But we digress. It's unlikely any of Blair's lunch companions, including Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Cisco CEO John Chambers, would have been so blunt, honest or insightful.

What they did tell him was that the UK needs to learn to take more risks and needs to foster stronger relations between universities and industry - citing the growth of the US technology industry, the vast majority of which has taken place between the gates of the University of Berkeley in the northeast and Stanford in the southwest of the Bay Area.

These are both useful suggestions and it will be interesting to hear how Blair interprets them and what change this most famously technophobic of leaders initiates as a result. But don't hold your breath.

Perhaps we're being unfair. Perhaps Blair does realise his past mistakes and sees this as a chance to play catch-up.

So why didn't he send somebody who has committed themselves to UK politics for longer than his own as-yet unannounced but widely expected departure?

The clue may rest in a timely article in the Independent on Sunday last weekend, which suggested Blair may well see a future for himself in the US where his reputation is less tattered than it is on this side of the pond.

Crucial to that would be working his contacts and completing his set of A-list 'friends in high places' - such as, say Steve Jobs and John Chambers , for starters.

Blair also met with the 'Governator', Arnold Schwarzenegger, yesterday and laughed off suggestions that when he's finished in politics he could play a lead role in Terminator 4.

Blair told the press pack: "It's the best offer I have. In fact, it's the only offer I have."

But perhaps he's working on others. After all, he may not know the first thing about what his lunch guests do for a living but the fact they are very powerful figures in the US will not have been lost on him.