WHILE young aspirants are being prised off even the bottom rung of the housing ladder, the Blairs’ appetite for property acquisition cannot apparently be sated. Tony and Cherie are taking advantage of the slump in property prices to go house hunting. As well as their old constituency home in Sedgefield and two flats bought in Bristol while son Euan was studying there, they own a Georgian townhouse, dubbed a “mini Downing Street”, in London’s Mayfair and an £800,000 knock-through mews house behind it. Now they want their very own Chequers. They are said by insiders in the country house market to be looking for a “historic” home within a 20-mile radius of the PM’s country residence and have even viewed a house called Chequers Manor. But with only £5 million to spend, Mr Blair has apparently set his sights on a 16th-century red-brick farmhouse near Stokenchurch in Buckinghamshire. Formerly owned by Ian Anderson of rock band Jethro Tull, Pophleys was on the market last year for £6 million but can now be snapped up for a mere £5.25 million, which is just about stretchable. That would take the Blair’s estimated mortgage debt up to about £9 million, which he is borrowing on the strength of speaking fees of £250,000 a time and those yet-to-be-started memoirs.