The Dying Days of Tony Blair

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:15 / 02.09.06

He has acknowledged that announcing he will step down before the next election is a mistake, but having done so surely if he truly gave a damn about the Labour party he would announce a date now, or step down. So is he really hanging on until someone who can challenge Gordon Brown for the leadership and Prime Ministership? Was the announcement of his leaving based on the thought Charles Clarke might be a candidate? Is he now holding on for John Reid being a succesful Home Secretary?

11:27 / 02.09.06

I think he's hanging on in the vain hope that things will, as he said many years ago, only get better. I don't think he wasnts to leave power at a time when he'll be remembered for the disastrous Iraq malarkey- he wants to be remembered as a hero. Of course, if he'd pulled out immediately after his successes in Northern Ireland, he could have been remembered favourably. Of course, now he's just chucking good money after bad, as it were. He's a rubbish gambler, basically.

13:11 / 02.09.06

Honestly I don't think there's a logical reason to stay, or even become Prime Minister in the first place. You have to be slightly whacked out to want that much power and work and the job only destroys you piece by piece. Psychologically speaking I'd say that anyone who seriously wants to be PM should be the last person to get the job (much like the Big Brother house really). He's not really hanging on for a reason, he just doesn't want to leave.

13:24 / 02.09.06

Very Socratic, Nadezhda Krupskaya. And I agree. Time for Anarchy, me thinks.

I reckon Big Tony's got a Prime Minister's checklist to tick off. Something like:

1) Win a landslide election.

2) Change a country.

3) Make friends with a corrupt US President.

4) Go to war.

5) Stay in office for ten fucking years.

6) Fuck it up for whoever stands after me - they must lose their General Election to show how great I am.

14:24 / 02.09.06

Well, he seems to be trying to tear the party apart enough that it all falls apart if Gordon were to take charge, in the hopes that he gets blamed rather than Tony, but it seems rather stupid to do it if he can get an anointed successor to replace him instead.

If an article in todays Independent is read a certain way it might suggest that Blair's nameless friends are briefing that he'll announce his date of departure before next years local elections as a morale booster. This makes no sense as the protest vote in this years elections wasn't based on the fact that he hadn't announced a date.

Labour badly needs a Geoffrey Howe, and the sooner the better.

nighthawk

07:42 / 03.09.06

Well, he seems to be trying to tear the party apart enough that it all falls apart if Gordon were to take charge

I don't know, it seems to me that by focusing all their attention on Tony Blair, his personality, and his departure date, the media are doing the labour party a massive favour. All the problems with new labour policy and the party itself are being tied to an expendable individual who will be gone by next spring anyway, and all the problems with the labour movement are being linked to the timing of a hand over of power.

18:17 / 03.09.06

Lady, it can be seen like this: at the moment Labour are bound to lose the next election because they've been in power for quite a while and the last few years have been quite politically traumatic. So you put someone in power who will be a Leader of the Opposition, particularly if the people you can envisage following you as PM are a bit too young for the position (David Milliband for example). In order to make sure the situation is correctly read you hold off for as long as possible before announcing your departure as current PM. The thing that people tend to forget about Blair is that while he's completely raving, he's a very very good politician (I hold up the systematic destruction of the media opposition as evidence- Greg Dyke, Piers Morgan). I think that he wants to hang on to power badly but I also think that he's doing this for a reason and the guy's not exactly party loyal so it's the one that seems most obvious.

09:20 / 05.09.06

Senior minister claims Blair will leave within a year but says he has not got any proof for that... Several letters going round from MPs asking Blair to step down... Farewell tour planned...

Daily Mirror: Leaked Memo?. A SENSATIONAL memo leaked to the Mirror reveals how Labour experts are planning Tony Blair's exit from No10. The retirement blueprint aims to promote the "triumph of Blairism" and allow the PM to quit on a wave of euphoria after 10 years in office. The secret strategy - drawn up by a small group of loyalists - is well under way. Mr Blair's "farewell tour" includes plans to appear on Blue Peter, Songs of Praise and Chris Evans' radio show.

Well, just as long as he doesn't become a new Doctor Who companion I'm cool.

Not in the Face

13:49 / 05.09.06

Latest conspiracy theory I have heard is that Blair is waiting till he gets nominated by the US for role of Secretary-General of the UN, given that elections are early next year. This gives him a satisfying 'exit strategy' that makes it look as if everyone in the whole world loves him, even if most of the UK populace is sick and tired of looking at him

20:43 / 05.09.06

The Government says Tony Blair will be gone in a year, The Sun says he'll be going on the 31st May. Of course, all that happens now is that people say 'why wait?'

Why wait?

03:03 / 06.09.06

Yeah, "why wait"?... Fuck-hole...

Mind you, let's not forget the checklist:

5) Stay in office for ten fucking years.

6) Fuck it up for whoever stands after me - they must lose their General Election to show how great I am.

Tony wants to win this game, even if we all lose in the process... the Fuck-hole...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:05 / 06.09.06

Two junior ministers have now quit, explicitly blaming Tony Blair for hanging on. In response Blair has claimed he was about to sack one of them anyway which, even if accurate, is probably one of the weakest responses he could have gave.

pointless & uncalled for

12:16 / 06.09.06

It shames me that I work for a bunch of ten year olds in a playground.

13:14 / 06.09.06

How cool would it be if Blue Peter refused to have him on?

Hydra vs Leviathan

13:31 / 06.09.06

1) Win a landslide election.

2) Change a country.

3) Make friends with a corrupt US President.

4) Go to war.

5) Stay in office for ten fucking years.

6) Fuck it up for whoever stands after me - they must lose their General Election to show how great I am.

Sounds awfully similar to someone else's prime ministerial checklist...

13:39 / 06.09.06

Maggie?

14:00 / 06.09.06

[Threadrot} Inspired by the news, this thread, and others, I wrote a kind-of nasty childen's story at some point last night or this morning, to help vent my anger at the Gremlin faced one. It's called "Tony Bliar: fuck-hole for hire." It actually worked, and made me laugh eventually, which was nice. It has also made me chuckle again today, and feel a tad better about Life, after this thread reminded me of it and I thus just re-read it.

If you like, I'll PM it to anyone who wants a copy, but be warned, though it's small, it's full of nasty swearing, and it's not very liberal minded, come to think of it, maybe, I dunno... Oh, and this is also a way of saying thanks for starting this thread, as well. It's made me think and helped me feel better three times already now. Thanks. [/Threadrot]

16:36 / 06.09.06

Seven? Do I hear an advance on seven? Ahhh, it's at times like this that politics becomes the most fun you can have without invading somewhere and subjegating their peoples.

Yes, eight now...

Ho ho ho. I love it when it gets this biting. I can't believe I'm going to be out of the country for the Labour conference. Suckage.

07:27 / 07.09.06

Blair is going to be making an announcement today of what he intends to do, no-one yet seems to know when he'll be making that announcement so that's pretty much in line with his approach to the whole issue.

In government but not in power...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

13:03 / 07.09.06

Bollocks! We wait and wait and then it turns out his statement was pre-recorded.

He's apologising to the British people for the behaviour of the Labour Party! "It's not our finest hour!" WANKER! The next part conference will be his last, he'll not announce a precise date now because "it's not right".

It's all the Labour party's fault, not Tony Blair's.

God, I waited an hour for a statement that achieves nothing.

13:26 / 07.09.06

I nearly stayed in to listen to it, despite Sheena's protestations that she needed to go for a walk. I'm glad I didn't now... sounds like it wouldn't have been worth a shitty carpet.

Are there transcripts anywhere yet?

Quantum

13:36 / 07.09.06

Our Lady, you mean Tony got your hopes up and then disappointed you? Colour me astonished.

13:55 / 07.09.06

I wouldn't say I'm disappointed, more surprised. It would seem that Tony Blair has been posessed by the ghost of Steve Irwin.

"Now this here is the Labour Party. Whilst it spends 23 hours of the day sleeping, like this, it can be ferocious if woken suddenly. So I'm just going to put my head in it's gaping maw, like so, then flick it's tiny penis with a cacti, like so..."

Crickey !"

Feverfew

18:52 / 07.09.06

My positive half wants to believe that Mr Blair is staying in power long enough to make one last positive thing happen, so that he can go out on an Up rather than a fairly chronic Down.

My negative half, however, stoically believes that Mr Blair is just waiting for a convenient time to quit either just before something Down happens so it's blamed on the Next Guy, or so he can quit after resolving the Crisis and, again, go out on an Up following the Down.

Which equates to either a Free Lollipop Law or a End to a War, neither of which seem particularly likely.

I wish I wasn't cynical, sometimes. It's just easier.

Baz Auckland

05:47 / 08.09.06

All of this seems really similar to what happened to the Canadian Liberal Party a few years back:

We had an old PM (Jean Chretien) who people wanted to leave, and wouldn't leave, and a popular Finance Minister (Paul Martin) who many wanted to be the next PM and was pretty much guaranteed to win the leadership contest.

In the end, Chretien gave Martin the boot as Finance Minister for plotting to take over, the party split into camps, Chretien eventually left (possibly too late), and after the next election, the Liberals had a minority government....which soon became a Conservative minority government.

(we'll have to wait and see how Brown is as PM, but Martin turned out to be a pretty lousy one, so some of the blame of the party failures has to go to him...)

11:35 / 08.09.06

Minister Harriet Harman told critics to shut up or risk letting in the Tories

Has she spoken to anyone who isn't Labour faithful in the last few months? Anyone at all?

nighthawk

11:44 / 08.09.06

Wow they all smell blood now, huh? A glimpse of power and the big names are tripping over each other to make sure they get their share.

David Cameron must be loving this, but why should the rest of us care? That's a genuine question...

Peach Pie

11:44 / 08.09.06

did you see his interview yesterday? he kept faltering so often. was he dazed or just really, really pissed off?

Jack The Bodiless

10:40 / 13.09.06

Someone scratched SHUT UP AND JUST FUCKING DIE ALREADY, CUNTBOY on the front of his lectern, apparently. And the entire front row were miming giving him the slow handclap.

Fist Fun

13:10 / 13.09.06

I think he is hanging on so that the new Prime Minister will get a honeymoon effect which will last until the next election and help labour to another term in office.

All the grime will stick to Blair and the next candidate can come in untarnished. He has been a fantastic Prime Minister but this always happens for every government in every country throughout history. Lengthy power and popularity don't mix. All the haters will spend their lives hating everyone in power, but how can you ever hope to change anything if you always hate those in power?

Char Aina

13:49 / 13.09.06

hatred can be a pretty effective drive for change, dude.
honda adverts aside, i think a certain degree of hatrism is essential, if only to keep popular leaders in check.

perhaps i misunderstand your point?

09:49 / 14.09.06

Patricia Hewitt has seemingly been on the good drugs: Hewitt calls for the public to have a say in who the new Labour leader is. Quite what she thinks this will achieve is unclear, allowing non-members to vote for the next Labour leader questions what the value of being a fee-paying member of the Labour party is for, let alone giving Tories, UKIP, Lib Dems and so on a choice in who leads a party they are fighting against.

If people who aren't Labour members get to vote, then logically people who aren't Labour members should be allowed to stand for leader, in which case I vote for David Tennant for next Labour leader as his boundless enthusiasm will be sure to win over the surly unions.

Alternatively SHUT UP HEWITT.