Gone within a year?
So has Tony Blair seen ? On one hand, we're told that the letter has not been received in Downing St, but on the other, a senior Cabinet source has told me that they have seen it - and that in effect, it calls for Tony Blair to go.
And today, the chairman of Labour's NEC Sir Jeremy Beecham, as well as Cabinet minister David Miliband - close to Tony Blair and once the head of his policy unit - have appeared on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ (listen here and here), effectively setting out the very timetable that Tony Blair has been refusing to confirm. What they've said is that Blair will be gone within a year, and that he will not attend another Labour Party conference.
This is precisely what many Labour Party members have been demanding to know, and I am now told that in Downing St, they are hoping that this will be enough to quell this storm.
The question is - does it have to be heard from the prime minister himself? That, really, tells you what this story is all about. Many Labour MPs, certainly many around Gordon Brown, simply don't trust what they're being told, and won't unless they hear it said publicly by Tony Blair himself.
They're sick of code about ample time and stable and orderly transitions, they're sick of Sir Jeremy Beecham or David Miliband telling us what they think the PM wants to do, they want to hear it from him - that he plans to go on, but not to go on for more than another year, and that he plans to make sure that there is a decent handover - probably to Gordon Brown.
And my suspicion is that this pressure will stay until those words come from his lips.
What today has proved is that the era of nudges and winks, the era of 'trust me' from Tony Blair, is no longer enough for many in Blair's party, and even his Cabinet.
I'm 
Comments
He won't go until he's bean there longer than Maggie.
If he stays any longer - and certainly until after the 07 elections - Labour run the very real risk or loosing in Scotland and Wales.
His time has passed if indeed he ever had a time.
He wasn't a very good PM, he never seemed to understand how to do the job and he surrounded himself by some pretty ineffectual PR bods.
He has demoralised many in his party, thousands more have left it and the polls show people are now turning away from the New Labour brand.
Blair has spent years lecturing the public sector on how to learn from the private sector.
Now is the time for him to show us he has a single conviction and follow the private sector himself - any CEO who'd done to their company what Blair has to his party would have had to walk the plank long ago.
It often astonishes me just how cruel politics can be. Here's a man who's nurtured David Miliband throughout his political career, even promoting him to the cabinet. And in return Mr Miliband behaves like this. His cynicism has left me speechless.
All this is now once again speculation which as I have said before i am pretty fed up of- just because two Mp's wrote to Mr Blair to ask him to go (apparently) I still maintain that he will stay until he knows he wants to go- he has a date in his head and I doubt there is a chance we will find that out and I doubt there is a chance he will go before it
Many Labour MPs, certainly many around Gordon Brown, simply don't trust what they're being told, and won't unless they hear it said publicly by Tony Blair himself.
I won't believe it until I see it.
The very fact that this is the story of the day shows what damage Blair is doing by hanging on and on.
Our country is faced with many problems: military and security, health and education, instead we are focussing on when the reigns of power will be transferred rather than what the person in posession is actually going to do about things.
All the time things slide. The memo shows Blairs advisors want to secure him a legacy, however the damage that is being done while he fiddles about now will be his legacy if he is not careful.
Mr Blair's policy on early intervention in "hard to reach" families - what a waste of time, energy and money. This is the man who created these hard to reach families by sustaining their lifestyle to buy votes.
He thinks we are all buttoned up the back. And he is truly offensive. Can we send him back on holiday?
Is it true that Tones advisers are taking lessons from the late Frank Sinatra's PR Team - countless farewell performances. Our PM could not care a jot about this country he hangs on purely for his ego and trappings of power. Part of the plot to deny Brown his promised Coronation instead a break out of internal hostilities within the Labour Party.Who started the stories about the demise of Scots within the cabinet ? Tony has not just told lies to the country he has also stitched up Brown.If only we had a stout hearted opposition party at this time.Tony will be destroyed by his own party -go now before you are pushed
If he stays any longer - and certainly until after the 07 elections - Labour run the very real risk or loosing in Scotland and Wales.
And if that happens, we shall have the political crisis that devolution was bound to cause right from the start. While there is the same government in devolved parliaments and Westminster, then there will be no direct problem, but a Tory government in one of these areas could cause severe administrative pains in the backside by refusing to co-operate with silly legislation.
I never thought anyone would say this, but the security of the United Kingdom rests on when Blair goes.
Didn't Brown once say that he would never believe another thing Blair told him? This brought him in line with the majority of the British people. So why should they want to hear "those words coming from his lips"? New Labour has been a failure and their only real electoral hope is that Cameron will continue with his emulation of the discredited Blair.
Other than Iraq, your Prime Minister has done a fantastic job.
Don't be cruel to him; and to see further, his successor, probably Gordon Brown, needs to lean on and not AGAINST his shoulders.
The certain way to quell any speculation is for Blair to put himself out of our misery & go NOW!
Mr Blair is a self focussed prima donna. Any leader with record for screw ups such has his should be sacked. He's the main man and the buck stops with him. He no longer represents the interest of the people in this country with a long line of failings such as his blind involvement in the Iraq war, an appalling home office performance, failed immigration policies and practices, violent crime on the rise, the health service job cuts inspite of making us all pay more National Insurance, Major IT projects going badly wrong, a hughly increased army of 'government' employees with gold plated pensions, about turns on police service reforms. You name it the list goes on and on.
Lets hope he goes soon and takes the rest of his party with him.
I believe that if Blair doesn't make a move in the next few weeks, he will be ousted at the Party Conference. The unions are flexing their muscle - that's bad news for those of us who believe that employers have rights too - and the party faithful are very unhappy. Now the anti-Blair backbenchers have been joined by the pro-Blairites. Extraordinary.
Gordon Brown is conspicuous by his absence. We've heard nothing - literally nothing - from him in weeks. Is he planning to lead Labour from the back or something? No policies, no thoughts - I find it astonishing that he thinks he is a serious contender when all we know of him is what a hash he's making of the economy.
Idle speculation on who'll bid for the leadership:
I wonder whether Alan Johnson is going to make a bid. He is a union man and has the right credentials for backing from the unions.
I think Charles Clarke might - he's been very noisy of late. Beyond that I don't know - any thoughts from the others here?
So Blair "intends to step down before the next Election".
Right so he's a lawyer, he will see things quite precisely. So he might announce a General Election at the end of the term and step down from that point on.
This would fulfil his promise and let him go out gracefully. He wouldn't want to encourage talk about that in case it starts Election fever...
Of the many mistakes that Blair made, the war in Iraq, not demanding a ceasefire in Lebanon saying he would stand down before the next election was surely for him his biggest yet. Blair simply has to go now! No-one believes a word he says - people are worried about a power vacuum - there's one already. If Labour have any chance of continuing to serve this country well he has to go.
Blair - from Hero to Zero.
A man whom knowningly assisted G.W. Bush in making Britain, the world and the universe a worse place for decades to come.
(ok, well, perhaps not the universe bit)
If Blair names a day what little autority he has will disappear and if he does not then the whispering campaign will continue and the media will continue to speculate. His position is now untenable and unless he wants to hand the tories a victory in the next local elections, he should go now.
Gone within a week more like? This guy really is full of his own self importance - farewell tour indeed - he's better off going off the Iraq and Afghanistan than touring the tv studios.
Blair's hand is being forced. The choice for him is that he either comes up with a date and soon, or the Party will decide for him. The upcoming Conference is going to be plotting galore. Blair is fast becoming a liability for the Labour Party and they have to cut him loose soon or else itll continue to hurt Labours electoral hopes. I think the Patry is realising it doesnt have to bow down to Blair the way it used too. Tipping point cant be far away. It needs one Blairite Cabinet member to say something about this and tipping point will be soon at hand.
In the 1997 campaign the Tories produced the Demon Eyes poster
which was roundly condemmed by Labaour and the Media who at that time were supine to the prospective Govt. How true that poster was..Blair has been dangerous to this Country with his mendacity his war mongering the sleaze from Ecclestone to Mandelson to Hindjas to the Casino /Dome to Jowell
to accusing 90 year old Rose Addis of Rscism ..Byers...cash for peerages
the list is endless. He has been a disgrace to Office...Brown stood by
saying nothing and he is as bad as Tony Blair. In private life the pair would be indicted on charges.
My conclusion about the pair and the entire wretched crew..NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE....except to crawl away packing their bags and becoming a foot note in History. Next to Thatcher loathe her if you must..both men are Pygmies.
Gordon Brown and his supporters seem to believe one thing- that the leadership of the Labour Party is his by right.
They need to figure out that a 'stable and orderly transition' from Blair to Brown will lead to GUARANTEED electoral wipe out at the next general election.
Reason 1- Despite the wishes of some in the Labour Party Grodon Brown would never be acceptable to a lot of voters who remember what he's done with their taxes and pension funds since becoming chancellor in 1997.
Reason 2- Also the wider elctorate would never countenance Blair handing over to Brown without a PROPER leadership election. If Brown wants to be leader he'll have to make sure that he fightys (and beats!) other serious contenders.
I had assumed that Blair will go when he wanst to, however the sight of ultra loyalist Blairites openly telling the boss he needs to go now mean that all bets are off. He is now a sitting duck and needs to go whilst only being wounded politically rather than after his political death.
Whatever happens I'd hazard a guess that the splits in the Conservative Party after the downfall of Thatcher are going to seem miniscule compared to what happens to the Labour Party now...
What goes around comes around!
If Tony Blair sets a date now, he might as well resign tomorrow, so little authority will he have left. If he goes now, then he's going to cripple labour's election prospects because his successor will have several years of power in which to mess up and lose the confidence of the public. Also, the reputation for backstabbing he would acquire would seal his doom... just look at Ming!
Ideally, Blair would want to go about a year before the election so that there would be plenty of time for a stable hand over. However, as his pary is baying for his blood, the best he can do is to give Gordon a date and not tell anyone else when it is.
David Cameron is fortunate; this crisis has taken the spotlight off his road accident in India AND destabilised the government. The odds on a Tory victory are improving every day.
Welcome back Nick. I think simply that Blair has let the power go to his head, and he just can't deal with the fact that at some stage he will no longer be PM. Trying to hang on like this is pathetic, it helps no-one and hinders everyone, as it overshadows the real issues that matter to each of us every day.
PS: enjoyed the programme with Tony Benn. I've just started on my International Baccalaureate course, and as part of that I have to complete an extended essay, which I was thinking of doing on the relationship between politics and the media, so it threw up some interesting ideas!
I long for Nick Robinson, the most biased political editor in the history of the ´óÏó´«Ã½, to go. How many letters do we have to send before that joyous moment comes?
Nick,
You've been suggesting that the "Blair Camp" is trying to 'pour oil onto troubled waters'. But wasn't it "Blair's Outrider" that provoked this latest bit of hostility ?
It stikes me that there are a lot of people who a speaking without thinking.
As one of the few Labour Party members who haven't left yet, Blair has to go - NOW!
The government is falling into a power vacuum, Labour is in freefall in the polls, political life in Britain has seized up.
Blair and his advisors have lost the plot. Blair's "baby ASBOs" seemed to me to be his "we are a grandmother" moment, when the country just realised he'd lost it. His advisors plans for a farewell tour are insane, there is no way that there would be a grateful nation begging for more - people want him out and pretty damn quick.
The only way for him to salvage this is to surprise us all and resign at conference. Any longer and he just clings to power, dragging the soul out of Labour and reducing our chances of a fourth term.
Nick, Don't you think this is simply just a smokescreen to stop the news pundits from asking the really interesting questions such as when are the police going to interview Blair re. the 'Cash for Peerages@ scandal?
Some people like to say he is a hero, but all I remember is terrorist attacks, accusations of being bush's poodle, NHS cuts, pension troubles, hugh IT problems, child molesters simply walking out of a open prison, not enough NHS dentists (my local has gone private and is asking &26 for a routine check up!), god knows how many scandals and affairs, U-turns and aplogies.
Next yeah when I'm old enough to vote (I'm 17) I simply wont.
I don't trust any politions anymore, I don't believe what they say.
I'm tired of empty smiles and promises that never happen.
I would be happy that Blair left, but then I'm scare about who will replace him.
God help us.
Nick Robinson's blogg is interesting
for me the main issues appear to be
1) is MAY 31 (even if it is believed
acceptable by brownites) acceptable.
2) what leverage do brownites have
to force the PM to state a date himself.
It seems to me increasingly difficult for the brownites to continue to play the uncertainty card. In the real, rather than the formal, world - with impartial observers there is now little uncertainty.
For many labour MPs having ridden
into office on the back of Blair's relative popularity the *real* issue seems
to be *how soon* they can ditch this leader for one they feel they can win. Has Blair forced dissidents to
reveal their true motives ? Or, will they continue to press the increasingly arcane "uncertainty" issue ?
Blair's legacy? Well he continued (with Brown I might add hand in hand) with the Tories policies turned them into a bastardised version (Blairism) in his own image, taxed everyone to the hilt, nannified the state, made the western world a worse place and turned the public sector into a vast mess of over paid "fat cats", quango's and failed projects.
No amount of appearances on Blue Peter will change that....
hey Nick
If there is no ideological split between Tony and Gordon, why should Gordon resist pinning his colours to the NEW Labour mast? Surely the truth is that there is an ideological split. Gordon does NOT believe in the NEW labour way.
Tony is by far the lesser of two evils as far as NL are concerned. I am a supporter of the ABG group,and it would be in everyone's interests to pause and consider the alternatives to TB before putting the knife in. If you recall who followed Margaret Thatcher after he own team turned on her, the result was an absolute disaster of a Prime Minister who was weak, ineffectual and totally without the support of his own Cabinet ultimately.The tories have yet to recover fully from those disastrous years. Will Labour learn from other's mistakes ?? I t doesn't seem so !
The most successful leader in a century for labour, and they want him gone?!Of course trust has been lost over issues such as Iraq and other foreign policies. Nonetheless, Blair has been the creator of New Labour's success, and very soon, Brown could be the destroyer of it. Will the backbenchers be happy then?
To the tune of "Bye Bye Love.
Bye Bye Tone, Hello Brownie Son
Goodbye Mandleson, I think I'm goin' to cry.Goodbye young Tone goodbye.
There goes his Clarkie, what a sweetie-pie, There goes his Straw man, with a whimp and a cry.
Bye bye Tone, Hello Cameron,
Old Brownies come and gone,I think I'm goin' to cry,
Bye bye young Tone Bye bye.
Bye bye young Tone........Bye bye.
The thing that gets me about all this is the Labours Partys arrogance that it alone has the right to choose the PM.Gordon Brown is a Scott as is John Reid. Gordon Brown should be running for premier of Scotland.
Blair should have sacked Brown long ago.Brown is a tax tax tax Chancellor with little shown in the way of benefits.
Brown also has fully backed the needless and stupid wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has never once said, What are we doing there?.
Labour needs to have rebirth. Brown has been part of the corruption and lies from the start.
I am heartily sick of hearing about Mr Blair and Mr Borwn. Surely there must be something else happening in the world that deserves a mention. The news programmes are so full of this, that there is hardly any room for anything else. Come on, lets get back to some sense of normality and give us some proper news instead of this media created farce.
Nick Robinson is unique in that he has brought political journalism and commentary in the UK to a new low.
His style and vicious approach would be more suited to a scandal column for a tabloid newspaper than the ´óÏó´«Ã½ giving him prime place to undermine everything 'Blair'does.
I don't agree with everything that the Prime Minister does or has done but he deserves more respect than that afforded by powerful political 'Editors'(?)who have turned UK politics into a soap opera.
Nick Robinson are you retiring soon, hopefully before Tony Blair ? Can the ´óÏó´«Ã½ give us some decent and respectable 'journalism' very soon.
Regardless of how much everyone in the UK critisizes Tony Blair for his policies and more specifically his foreign policy people tend to forget the basic premise behind all of Tony's decisons.
"The world is a better place with the United States and the UK working as allies towards a common goal rather than competing on a world stage for hegemonic supremacay".
The idea that Tony Blair is merely a poodle of George W. Bush is inaccurate. It would be the same as saying PM Howard of Australia and PM Stephan Harper of Canada are Bush's poodles as well. It is much more logical to think that these men think alike toward common goals surrounding "Democratic Peace Theory" and Hegemonic Stability Theory".
Meaning: The world is a safer and more stable place with the United States running the show, democracy in the middle east, and its allies remaining in support of thier basic premises of democracy and free-market economics.
Think of the Big Picture !
Such short memories or no memory at all is the way I describe those who think they will be better off with Tony Blair gone.
History will show him to have been our finest Pime Minister ever, in my opinion his qualities of truly believing in what he said and did stands him miles above all those currently stabbing him the back.
Tony Blair led an otherwise non-electable Labour Party into power (the non-electable being those currently baying for his blood)and has kept them there ever since, oh what a shock they and the nation have coming to them when he goes.
I for one and i know many others were (british born citizans) denied a vote if all votes had been counted on the last election no doubt there would no longer be a labour goverment hense i feel IF and that is IF tony blair decides he is leaving or even gets pushed out there should be an immediate General Election called as John Major done those many years ago.
As far as the war in iraqis concerned i believe that ton blair and george bush were right to go into it so what there is no weapons found YET!! but also if they wern't backed by the EU why are we still part of it WE being britan did not start the war between lebanon and isreal therefore why should we call a ceasefire they refused to stop the war anyway when it had been decided i believe that the UK should go backto the ways when everything was running well there was none of this Human rights for murderers they asfar as im concerned give up their rights when they kill innocent people. and they deserve to die follow america i say bring in the electric chair out with european laws in with british democracy back to the old readings in gallons and pints and out with the liters get the NHS back on Track an noneof these threats to close placesdown labour stated 13,000 ppl would be let in previously from other countries but it was 600,000 now i see it as this is causing the energy problems inbritain we are now over run with people and there is not enough supply to fit demand the way i see it anyone whocommits a crime in this country should be automatically ejectedfromthe country and there should be a way of makingsure they can never come back in for life.
Bit of math. Small island say for example the minimum is 1 ltre pp per day if the supply has 60 litres max how do u supply 600,000 does that say we r over crowded ???? maybe if the math were adjusted to beable to provide we wouldnt have the troubles of high prices for supply the problems of all this r being created all by LABOUR!!