Tony Blair — when will he go? How will his departure affect other Blairites in the party? Who's bitching about who? Will Gordon Brown settle for a promise that this year's Labour Conference will be Tony's last? And so on and so on, ad nauseum.

The British media have been busy creating a personality cult around Mr. Blair over the past week or two that is just sickening. Instead of focusing on the policies, we've had pages upon pages of "political analysis" in newspapers and online, exploring such important questions as "When will Blair go?" and "Will Gordon Brown be satisfied?"

Don't get me wrong — the question of who runs our country is no trivial matter. But the skill of the mass media has been to marginalise the policies of Mr. Blair and the policy changes we can expect should he be replaced with Mr. Brown, and focus instead on the personalities and the people. The BBC has created a whole sub-section on its site, filled with articles such as today's headline, "Blair calls for halt to sniping" and previous gems, including this morning's "Blair tries to rein in squabbling" and yesterday's "Clarke reignites leadership row". Needless to say, none of these articles discussed policy matters.

The print media has been no better. Every newspaper, from The Guardian to The Daily Mail, has been focusing on the tremendously important leadership battle — who said what, who's allied with whom, political in-fighting, and other distractions.

Why has a personality cult been created? In order to disguise the fact that, essentially, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are the same. As John Palmer observes, "It is commonly observed that the ferocity of the Blair/Brown conflict stands in stark contrast with the slight or even non-existing policy differences between the prime minister and the chancellor."

They come from the same ideological stable (after all, they both helped create "New Labour"), the same system, the same mold. In fact, it hardly matters whether Blair stays or goes, because in terms of policy we should not expect anything significantly different no matter what. During his reign, Tony Blair was responsible for implementing foreign policy that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people, helped all the way by the mass media, and there is no reason to suggest Gordon Brown will be any different. By creating a cult of personality and pretending it really matters whether we have a "Blairite" Labour or a "Brownite" Labour, the media is once again helping to whitewash the crimes that, as senior members of the ruling party, both men are responsible for.