AFTER three years, a hundred Wednesday afternoons listening to Tony Blair, many grim trips to party conference at the seaside and hours trawling the pages of Hansard, I'm off.

Looking back, a lot has happened since I first set foot in the House of Commons, wide-eyed and a lot less cynical than I am today.

I have seen the plain ridiculous (Geoff Hoon trying to pretend he wasn't going to roll over and let the Americans use Fylingdales for George Bush's barmy "Son Of Star Wars"), the hilarious (John Prescott, always), the terrifying (the split second before we realised the missile being hurled at the Prime Minister was actually a condom full of purple baking powder, not anthrax) and an awful lot of tragedy.

Within minutes of starting, the Selby rail crash had happened. My first call as a Parliamentary reporter was to Downing Street to get words of sympathy for the victims. A few hours later, I was listening to Mr Blair in the Commons pay tribute to the villagers who had rallied round the dead and injured and thinking: Is there going to be another day like this?

There were many. British troops were sent to war - amid indescribable tension in the Commons , in the case of Iraq - twice. And there was September 11.

Watching images of planes flying into the World Trade Centre, while sat in one of the world's best-known "postcard" terrorist targets, was one of the oddest experiences I've known.

As planes continued to fly overhead and workers bailed out of other tall London buildings, such as Canary Wharf, we just sat there, staring blankly at scenes of utter destruction.

Then there were the US tourists, wandering round the Commons with tour guide books in hand oblivious to what was happening back home. Standing in Westminster Hall, I felt I ought to say something. But I really didn't have the heart, or the words.

I also witnessed, in no particular order, the Queen Mother's funeral, Tony Blair walk through the door of Number Ten - looking deliberately glum and business-like - to start Labour's second term in power, the knife-edge vote on student top-up fees, the demise of two Tory leaders and the foot and mouth debacle.

Ministers and spin doctors came and went (Alastair Campbell, Stephen Byers, Bev Hughes, Jo Moore, Alan Milburn, who is now sporting a Hugh Grant-style foppish haircut), Dr David Kelly killed himself and the Government was cleared of "sexing up" the Iraq war dossier by Lord Hutton.

All of which ensured I was never short of something to write about. But, despite all of these events, I actually feel very little has changed.

We have a Labour Government not quite living up to expectations, a Tory Party not quite ready to boot it from office and Liberal Democrats not quite able to take advantage of the difficulties of the other two. Which is exactly as I found it in February 2001. I recall one MP saying to me, in the aftermath of September 11, "politics will never be the same again."

But it was and it is.

Within weeks they were hurling the same insults at each other. Labour was blaming everything that went wrong on 18 years of Tory misrule and everything that went right on Gordon Brown's handling of the economy.

The Tories were yelling about all spin and no delivery. And they still are.

There are just more bomb detectors and security screens surrounding them as they do it.

Ian Drury replaces James Slack from next Friday.

Updated: 09:42 Friday, June 18, 2004