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Is Tony Blair Starting To Lose His Grip ?

14:38 / 24.04.04

From today's Guardian

Blair Says Sorry To His Cabinet

" Tony Blair rounded off a week of Euro-mayhem by apologising to cabinet colleagues for the way in which news of his decision to promise a referendum on the EU's propsed consitution leaked into the media before he could consult them all. "

Loved the bit about Euro-mayhem.

Anyway, coming from someone who seems almost psychotically incapable of apologising for anything, this seems like a fairly ominous sign. Y'know, in a good way.

More seriously though, New Labour's normally sickeningly good media management seems to have seriously unravelled here - coupled with Irag, is the referendum going to be Blair's poll tax ? Do we want it to be ? Or are the alternatives too awful to consider ? What does anyone think ?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

19:17 / 24.04.04

Once in Government the smooth Labour machine doesn't seem to have worked as well as it did when they were in office. One of the upsides of the Conservatives complete inability to be an effective opposition party means that the labour party has to fight itself, which is why Tony finds it easier to fight his party over tuition fees than the country over the war in Iraq.

Of itself I don't see Tony Blair's week as being any worse than a bad week two years ago. But now he's lost that strange something he once had, the thing that meant that when challenged on the Bernie Ecclestone affair he could say "everyone knows I'm a pretty okay guy" and the country believes him. He doesn't have that, now he's having to use arguments, which is something he hasn't needed for almost a decade.

He's got too used to letting everything be judged on emotion, he doesn't seem capable of a really great intellectual argument so he's stuck on emotion, which no one buys any more, and his huge majority.

19:29 / 24.04.04

The referendum - if it even happens - won't be anything like as damaging for Blair as the Poll Tax, at least not in the same way. Quite apart from anything else, turnout will probably be extremely low - it's not going to impact on the electorate in the same way.

But yeah, Blair and the machine have visibly lost control of matters here. The whole affair seemed to come out of nowhere, a complete panic move. He (or possibly Srtaw, I can't remember) even admitted as much - there was a comment during an interview that the only reason he was forced to make a statement to the Commons was because the press get ahold of behind-the-scenes chatter much sooner nowadays. If that's not an admission that they're losing control in terms of image and PR, I don't know what is.

16:55 / 25.04.04

Well, I think this highlights just how frightened he is of the Murdoch press. More than anything else, ( see Observer, IOS today, ) he seems to have been forced into " reverse gear " on this by the News Of The World, which if no real surprise, is still pretty alarming. This undead Australian, running the country... and while tempoarily appeased by the referendum, he's not likely to back off if it comes to a vote, which it looks like it will do if that's what he wants. No, I think after nearly ten years of a charmed existence, give or take the odd blip, Mr Tony's been hoisted on his own petard. But we'll see, I guess.

Tryphena Absent

21:21 / 25.04.04

now he's lost that strange something he once had, the thing that meant that when challenged on the Bernie Ecclestone affair he could say "everyone knows I'm a pretty okay guy" and the country believes him

That naturally happens when a Prime Minister has to make tough decisions. He was once extremely middle of the road and so, even when he had to go one way or another people would accept that as a decision that had to be made. As soon as he started a war he stopped being that middle of the road man and became someone who did everything his own way and for himself because he wasn't responding to an immediate threat and it was perfectly obvious that he wasn't. No one likes an aggressor thus that strange something disappeared and he began to lose power. Thank fuck.