Middle East: Tony’s sis-in-law barges in

Tony Blair will have to think again if he thought that one of the upsides (there can't be many) of taking on his new role as Middle East peace envoy would be that at least he could escape his troublesome sister-in-law, Lauren Booth.

The hard-Left Booth, who has relentlessly embarrassed her brother-in-law, calling Blair's New Labourites "traitors" and describing her "shame" at the former Prime Minister's decision  to invade Iraq, is about to pop up on his new doorstep.

She is joining a "peace boat" to run the Israeli blockade of Gaza later this week to take medical supplies to the Palestinian territory. Besides Booth, one of Cherie Blair's six half-sisters, the boat's activists include a Holocaust survivor and an 81-year-old retired Catholic nun from the US. They plan to make a 20-hour crossing from Cyprus and they say that they have every expectation of being intercepted by the Israeli navy.

Quite how Blair will react if he gets a call to put up the bail money to get his sister-in-law out of an Israeli prison is anybody's guess. But if Booth does make it to Gaza, she will have bested Blair, who is supposed to be working on Palestinian economic development. He has yet to visit Gaza. A planned trip last month had to be cancelled because of death threats against him, according to his spokeswoman. ·