The beginning of the end? (For Tony Blair)

It is of course Tony's war which is the elephant in the dining room.

Blair says to quit within year

Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Thursday he would quit within a year but refused to give an exact date to placate Labour Party mutineers who want a speedy change of leader to revive their fortunes.

He said that this month's Labour conference would be his last as leader.

But in a televised statement, he said: "I'm not going to set a precise date now, I don't think that's right. I will do that at a future date and I'll do it in the interests of the country."

Chancellor Gordon Brown, eager to heal damaging divisions in the ruling party, said earlier he would support Blair's decision.

New policies can win back the core voters we have lost

Downing Street is in denial about New Labour's unpopularity - and the party's revival can't be left in the hands of politicians

Tony Woodley
Wednesday September 6, 2006
The Guardian

Downing Street apparently wants the prime minister to leave office cresting "a wave of euphoria", according to the leaked memo published in the Daily Mirror yesterday. Judging by yesterday's outburst of letter-writing among hitherto staunchly New Labour MPs, it seems that the only wave in sight is from people bidding farewell.

Euphoria there may be, nevertheless. But it will not be secured by appearing on every TV show short of I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, as the delusional spin doctors imagine. It will be because an entirely unnecessary and self-inflicted period of political damage has at last been brought to an end.

I was criticised in a Guardian editorial on Monday for comparing the prime minister's clinging to office with Thatcher's 16 years ago. She, it argued, wanted to "go on and on" whereas Blair has said he will go. There is a difference, but it is not all in Tony Blair's favour. At least we knew - on this matter as every other - what Mrs Thatcher wanted. She spoke her mind plainly.

Today we are lost in a wilderness of hints, of unspoken schedules and timetables, against a background of allegations of broken promises in the past. Leaks and suppositions are no substitute for a clear timetable. A wind of openness and democracy is required to clear the air and lead to a renewal of people and policies. The labour movement deserves to be let in on the process.

Normally, a leader who has won three general elections in a row would be able to expect to choose the timing of his or her departure. We are not in that situation now, however, for three reasons.

The first is the prime minister's unforced announcement in 2004 that he would step down before fighting the next election. That has clearly had a destabilising effect, whatever may have been intended. Second, he has been unable to secure unity at the top of the government. I am in no position to judge where the responsibility for the constant sniping between the Brown and Blair "camps" lies, but no one has been able to put a stop to it. This has further divided the party. Third, and most important of all, the prime minister's determination to continue to nail this country to the mast of George Bush's foreign policy, dramatically highlighted during the Lebanon crisis, has sapped his moral authority beyond recall.

None of this is the result of a leftwing conspiracy. Indeed, it is stalwart backbench Blair supporters, fearing for their seats, who are saying enough is enough.

We are left with a situation in which the Tories can already tell the British people who will be leading their party at the next general election. So can the Liberal Democrats. Only Labour lacks a standard-bearer, and does not know who will be leading the effort to close the widening deficit in the opinion polls.

So the case for ending the uncertainty is overwhelming. Can we really put up with another year of Stephen Byers coming up with crackpot conservative tax-cutting plans and have it spun that he is really spelling out Downing Street's thinking? We need the outriders back in their stables before winter draws in. Nor can we sacrifice Labour seats in the Scottish parliament and Welsh assemblies on the altar of personal ambitions.

With a new leader must come a new agenda. Downing Street seems to be in a state of denial about the real state of the party - and indeed, the real popularity of "New Labour". At the last two elections, the party lost millions of votes, mostly from working people. The electoral system has given us big parliamentary majorities on fewer votes than we used to lose on - and support is further slipping away, particularly as a result of our policy in the Middle East. Unless we address this dissatisfaction, which is far from solely about the prime minister, a leadership election will achieve little. It might restore the trust tarnished by sleaze and spin, but it will not necessarily restore the enthusiasm of 1997.

<insistence on union role bit snipped>

Apart from the imperative of a new independent approach to the conduct of foreign policy, including bringing an end to the disastrous Iraq adventure, an agenda for the years ahead of the next general election should include measures to enthuse core Labour supporters - the sort we lost in 2001 and 2005.

A halt to privatisation would be a vote-winner. One of the biggest cons perpetrated by the Tories was to sell off utilities we owned - gas, electricity, water, railways - and then charge us a fortune to buy the same services back. A fresh drive to tackle poverty through raising the minimum wage and restoring the pensions link with earnings, along with bringing labour rights into line with international standards and serious action to support manufacturing industry, would help too.

None of this would scare floating voters, and would soon expose David Cameron's social conscience for the phoney bluster it is. Of course, it might not represent "the triumph of Blairism" that they are dreaming of in Downing Street, but that is something that will remain for ever out of reach.


· Tony Woodley is general secretary of the Transport & General Workers' Union [email protected]

The Guardian website with its New Labour commentators Toynbee, White and Kettle always on top, has already buried the piece one day after publication ...

Please find attached a copy of the statement made by the Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party earlier today.

"The first thing I'd like to do is to apologise actually on behalf of the Labour Party for the last week, which with everything that's going on back here and in the world has not been our finest hour to be frank. But, I think what is important now is that we understand that it's the interests of the country that come first and we move on.

"Now, as for my timing and date of departure, I would have preferred to do this in my own my way but has been pretty obvious from what many of my Cabinet colleagues have said, earlier in the week, the next party conference in a couple of weeks will be my last party conference as party leader. The next TUC will be my last TUC, probably to the relief of both of us. But I'm not going to set a precise date now. I don't think that's right. I will do that at a future date and I'll do it in the interests of country and depending on the circumstances of the time. Now that doesn't in any way take away from fact it's my last conference but I think the precise timetable has to be left up to me and to be done in a proper way.

"Now, I also say one other thing after the last week. I think it's important for the Labour Party to understand and I think the majority of people in the party do understand, that it's the public that comes first and it's the country that matters and we can't treat the public as irrelevant bystanders in a subject as important as who is their PM. So we should just bear that in mind in the way we conduct ourselves in the time to come. And in the meantime I think it's important that we get on with the business. I mean I was in a primary school earlier. Fantastic new buildings, great new IT suite. School results improving. I'm here at this school that just in the last few years has come on by leaps and bounds doing fantastically well. We've got the blockade on the Lebanon lifted today. You know, there are important things going on in the world. I think I speak for all my Cabinet colleagues when I say that we would prefer to get on with those things because those are the things that really matter to the country. So, as I say, it's been a somewhat difficult week but I think it's time now to move on and I think we will."

On the other hand, The Guardians print edition has today reports about "Labour in crisis" on 3/4 of the frontpage and completely on pages 2 to page 6 (well, some adverts in there, too).

Asked about Mr Blair's departure date this morning, the former education secretary said: "I think that will become clear. I mean, he's given an indication that later today he'll probably confirm some sort of yardstick so that people know approximately that he, along with the perceived wisdom, probably won't be in Downing Street a year from now."

According to a well-placed source, they had not had a single meaningful discussion about "transition" since before this May's local elections. They had spoken plenty of times on other issues, but not on this particular elephant in the room.

Whether the failure owes more to one man's ego or the other man's vanity is not really the issue. Downing Street accused Mr Brown of trying to blackmail the prime minister. The chancellor's camp charged Mr Blair with putting his own interests above those of the party. If Mr Blair truly believed his chancellor was guilty of blackmail (and was willing to sanction a public briefing to this effect) he should have surely sacked him. That he didn't - or couldn't - speaks volumes about the weakness of his position. An alternative logic is thus irresistible: that the prime minister's grasp on power is so enfeebled that he cannot reasonably cling to office for much longer.

Who could honestly have predicted, back in 1994 or even as late as 2005, that the years of New Labour ascendancy would end in this way, with an irreconcilable eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation between the two men whose raw talent and unprecedented closeness built the most electorally successful government in the history of the British left?

Craigoh

Er, well granted, in '94 one might not have predicted that, but by '05 - if not half way thru' the 2nd term - it was obvious that Blair would not go unless he was pushed - nay, shoved.

lomcevak

By 2005 ?!?!? Who wouldn't ??? We should be told!!!

Then let's have 'em stuffed (with a nod in the direction of John Cleese and Faulty Towers).

MichaelBulley

Could anyone possibly have said: "I predict that the years of New Labour... eyeball-to-eyeball... raw talent... successful government... British left"? Would anyone have waited for the end of the sentence?

madmustelid

Sod this. Where's the recruiting office for the People's Front of Judea?

Just like the Sopranos

John McDonnell, the leftwing MP who is the only confirmed challenger to Mr Brown for the Labour leadership, captured the mood. "Most of us have looked on aghast - it's almost been like an episode of the Sopranos, what has been going on over the last couple of weeks," he told Today.

"It is clear to us - as it is to almost the entire party and the entire country - that without an urgent change in the leadership of the party it becomes less likely that we will win that [next] election.

"That is the brutal truth. It gives us no pleasure to say it. But it has to be said. And understood. This is not a plot against you by people who want to reverse or slow down the progress you have led. We are all as determined as you are that nothing should stand in its way ... as utter Labour loyalists and implacable modernisers, we therefore have to ask you to stand aside."

The Guardian website with its New Labour commentators Toynbee, White and Kettle always on top, has already buried the piece one day after publication

He outlined the thread of contacts and friendships of Tom Watson, the minister who resigned. Most of the signatories to the letter calling on Blair to stand down, he claimed, were linked as old union comrades in arms. [..] The truth that will emerge, he said, is that Blair was "ousted by old Labour trade unions. That's who!" [..] "This is a well-planned, coordinated campaign organised by just one man - Gordon Brown. This is 1970s trade union politics carried out by shop stewards."

True or not, the Blair camp will present everything that follows as an old Labour trade union plot - and that is a calamity for Labour. Who lit the blue touchpaper? Some will say that Blair did, with his provocative Times interview in which he refused to give any timetable. If only he had chosen the coming party conference as his timely triumphal exit, the last moment left to leave with dignity and the gratitude of his party.

After all, the only reason why he promised not to stand a fourth time was because he had already lost public trust, along with much of his party's support. [..] His will-rattling attempts to chain his heir to his own agenda have not pleased his party, either. [..]

Here is the danger. The Labour party has no meaningful ideological schism, (certainly smaller than the Tories'). If John Reid, say, puts up against Brown for the loyalist cause, this would be no re-run of Benn v Healey, or only history repeated as farce. Apart from the few on the far left represented by John McDonnell, the great majority of MPs are New Labour, for neither Blair nor Brown, and they agree on most important things. You can find plenty of differences on issues ranging from nuclear power to constitutional reform, but these would criss-cross the Blair-Brown ranks haphazardly. This battle is essentially personal, not ideological.

So when the Blairites say their only purpose is to ensure the future is New Labour, they deceive themselves. Brown is the co-architect of New Labour policy and New Labour economics. He is no back-to-the-future socialist, though some might wish it. Now the Blair camp has broken cover, it is plain the tiny hard core aims to keep Brown out; ideology is only a fig leaf. In their desperation to create a difference, they toss in rightwing hand grenades, such as Stephen Byers's proposal to abolish inheritance tax. Not even the Tories suggest that - yet there was no slap-down from Blair.

Expect many more rightwing suggestions, designed to paint Gordon red. Any leadership contest from a New Labourite will turn into a personal grudge fight, inventing differences to hide what is ancient loathing of a "psychologically flawed" man, blending into the fears of those who know that Brown would demote or sack them.

In this mood, is Labour capable of conducting a leadership election as elegantly as the Tories did, leaving not a bruise on the victor? Can they save themselves? In all political feuds both sides self-righteously believe that they are their party's only true saviour. [..]

Look askance at injured innocence from the Blair camp: he's only just been elected, the public wants him to stay, why is everyone else rocking the boat? Or those who say, "Blair's going anyway, so why does he stand and fight?" No one knows what Blair thinks, but some of those urging him to stay harbour that darker wish: if only he hangs on long enough, another candidate can be got up and running. They have no other cogent policy reasons to explain what good Blair can do in a year, with his authority now gone.

Brown's poisoned inheritance

This will be a better government after Tony Blair has gone, for one simple reason. Gordon Brown won't have Gordon Brown to contend with. The rival poles of power made this government dysfunctional from a very early stage. Ministerial schemes were frequently frustrated by the need to get approval from both No 10 and the Treasury and, sometimes, the approval of one was enough to convince the other that it should not approve. That is why this government has generally lacked consistency of direction and purpose except on the economy (Brown's territory) and, less happily, on foreign policy (Blair's territory). Brown will no doubt have to appoint a few Blairites - though Blairism is so insubstantial as a political philosophy that it is hard to think of more than a handful who won't instantly become Brownites anyway - but he will not have to give away half his prime ministerial power before he starts.

But will it all be too late to save Labour from the general election defeat I predicted here last month? I fear it will. The best time for Blair to go was in late 2003 or early 2004, after the Iraq war and the discovery that Saddam's weapons of mass destruction didn't after all exist. Blair had no need to make apologies for the war. He could have stood by his belief that it was a good thing to overthrow a dictator while recognising that, wittingly or unwittingly, he had misled the people on one of the chief reasons for committing British troops. Blair would have appeared honourable (as the Tory foreign secretary Lord Carrington did when he resigned because the Foreign Office failed to foresee the Argentine invasion of the Falklands), New Labour's diminished reputation for honest government would have been restored, and the chancellor could have taken over smoothly, without being accused of a coup. Brown could have built a new, younger governing team and, within two years, faced the electorate with the honeymoon gloss still upon him. Labour's activist support would have rallied, with the poison of Iraq instantly drained. There would have been no need for Polly Toynbee's nose-pegs, and possibly no lost seats.

Brown now inherits damaged goods: a warring party and a sullen electorate. Beware of voters who wanted to punish a party but felt, for whatever reason, they couldn't do so. That was the mood in 2005, and it was also the mood in 1992. What happened to the Tories in 1997 could easily happen to Labour in 2009 or 2010. [..]