The day Blair accused his chancellor of blackmail

[IndianaGreen]

The knives are finally out to rid Britain of Bush's poodle!

The day Blair accused his chancellor of blackmail

· Brown demands PM go by Christmas
· Shouting match as PM refuses joint premiership

Patrick Wintour, political editor
Thursday September 7, 2006
The Guardian

An all-out power struggle between the chancellor and the prime minister, culminating with allegations of blackmail by Tony Blair and a ferocious shouting match between the two men, appeared last night to have forced Mr Blair to publicly declare as early as today that he will not be prime minister this time next year.

That may not be enough for Gordon Brown, who is understood to have demanded that Mr Blair quit by Christmas, with an effective joint premiership until a new leader is anointed by the party.

Mr Blair's statement - possibly to be made when he attends a north London school with education secretary Alan Johnson today - will effectively confirm what cabinet ministers, including David Miliband, have been hinting about his intentions in the past few days. It represents a further shift in position as the prime minister struggles to cling to office and prevent a meltdown in the party.
But last night Mr Brown found himself under pressure to repudiate the move by some MPs to force Mr Blair from office now. The Treasury hinted last night that it could accept a deal in which Mr Blair stood down by the beginning of May, so long as the prime minister made a public declaration of this intention within the coming months.

In probably the most astonishing day in the annals of New Labour, the use of the word blackmail to describe Mr Brown's actions over the past few days by Downing Street staff was authorised by Mr Blair, and reflected his view that Mr Brown is orchestrating a coup against him. Downing Street claimed the resignation yesterday of the junior defence minister Tom Watson and six parliamentary aides came with Mr Brown's agreement. The seven men quit the government demanding that Mr Blair stand down immediately. Later in the evening, another of the letter's signatories, Iain Wright, resigned as a parliamentary private secretary in the Department of Health.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labourleadership/story/0,,1866401,00.html

[Kagemusha]

1. Only because Tony dared them to and spat on them.

And insulted their intelligence to boot.

[babylonsister]

2. Blair has been asked to get lost. Is he staying for the blivet? nt

[aquart]

3. Gosh. Tony doesn't want to go. Go anyway, Poodle.

[Lexingtonian]

4. Brown is a wuss

if he doesn't force Blair out soon enough. Because Blair has been abusing his generosity and lack of nerve to no end.

I wouldn't mind this fun going on for another 2-3 days and Blair ending up dispatched. He deserves worse.

[IndianaGreen]

5. The print cover of The Independent tells it all: "The End Game"

[AlamoDemoc]

12. love the caption..,B'lier is goner

[IndianaGreen]

6. Brown demands March handover as Blair's power haemorrhages

Brown demands March handover as Blair's power haemorrhages
By Andrew Grice, Political Editor
Published: 07 September 2006

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are deeply divided over the timetable and terms under which the Prime Minister should leave Downing Street.

As Blair allies accused Brown supporters of orchestrating a plot to topple the Prime Minister, the two men held two heated crisis meetings at No 10 but failed to break the deadlock between them.

On a day which saw the dramatic resignations from the Government of one minister and seven parliamentary aides who want Mr Blair to quit immediately, the rift between New Labour's two main architects fuelled speculation that the Prime Minister could soon be forced out of office by his own MPs.

More resignations could follow today unless Mr Blair makes a personal pledge about his departure timetable, critics warned last night. They claimed more than 100 Labour MPs were not satisfied by hints that Mr Blair would resign on 31 May next year and leave office on 26 July.

One opponent claimed the Prime Minister could be "out by the end of this week" unless he makes an immediate statement clarifying his intentions. In an attempt to survive, he is expected to do so today -but his statement may be short of the firm timetable demanded by his internal opponents.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1369601.ece

[savemefromdumbya]

7. Read somewhere that Prince charles wants Blair gone too

[Mind_your_head]

8. Of course he does

but Charles is unwittingly wrapped up in this mess as well.

[legin]

16. I think this may be the point

blair, and his oversized ego, want to knock up 'a decade in power'. This however comes after another batch of local elections.

If blair is still PM when the local elections take place Labour will get it in the neck again.

So Brown is trying to get rid of blair before the local elections.

[samsingh]

9. i had such hope for Blair when he took office

what happened to him. he needs to go so that Democracy can begin to heal.

[IndianaGreen]

10. I remember Blair's speech in the early dawn

on the day of his great victory over John Major's Tories, and the great hope that he inspired. Blair has fallen from Grace, and he deserves Eternal Damnation!

[Matilda]

19. Me too.

And how I wished I could be in London that day; it was so exciting.

And now it's all dissolved into dust.

[Mind_your_head]

11. Blackmail eom

[Ghost Dog]

13. The Big Question: How does a party oust a serving Prime Minister?

The Big Question: How does a political party oust a serving Prime Minister?
By Andy McSmith
Published: 07 September 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1369572.ece

Are there any rules?

Anyone plotting to prise the Prime Minister out of Downing Street will no doubt have consulted the Labour Party Consolidated Rule Book. This says that there is an opening every summer to nominate someone else to be the party leader, during the run-up to the Labour Party annual conference. But anyone who wants to take on Tony Blair in a contested election has to collect the signatures of at least one in five Labour MPs. That is 71 MPs, in the current Parliament. And even if someone were to turn up at a party conference with the required number of nominations, the conference has to vote on whether they want an election or not. If they say no, Tony Blair can carry on unchallenged.

The final point that makes it all irrelevant is that nominations for this year have already closed, nearly three months ago. The only nominations submitted were for the old team of Tony Blair and John Prescott.

Is there any other method?

No. The next chance to try to force an election will not come around until the next annual conference in September 2007. Nobody expects Tony Blair still to be in office by then, and even if he hung on that long, and someone with enough support to attract 71 nominations from Labour MPs, such as Gordon Brown, decided to take him on, at that point even Tony Blair would surely realise that the game was up and would quit rather than put up a fight. So the formal procedure for removing Tony Blair is meaningless. Those who want him out will have to devise a scenario in which he feels he has no choice but to resign.

What happens if a prime minister refuses to resign?

<snip>

Well, then, what method is left?

The short answer is "senior colleagues" - or as they were once known in parliamentary slang, the "men in grey suits". Who these men were depended on the circumstances of the day, but they usually included the Chief Whip and key members of the Cabinet. Their job was to go as deputation to Downing Street and solemnly inform the Prime Minister that he had lost the confidence of his colleagues. There was much talk about these shadowy gentlemen in the final days of Margaret Thatcher's premiership, until their failure to step forward caused them to be renamed the "men in brown trousers".

/more...

[Matilda]

15. I've been wondering aloud why Brown doesn't challenge,

and your post has answered the question.

We operate under the Westminster system here in Australia, and a
government member who thinks he has the numbers can challenge the
leader at any time. Keating did it twice to Bob Hawke, lost the first
time and went to the backbench, then challenged again and won. Peter
Costello would love to challenge Howard, but he doesn't have the numbers
so he just grumbles from time to time. I assumed that this could also
happen in Britain because we have basically the same parliamentary
system, but it seems that the Labour Party has its own rules.

I think the Labour rules in the U.K. are perhaps more destabilising in
a situation like this when there is a great deal of dissatisfaction - it
would be better for the party if a challenge could be mounted and the
issue settled one way or the other, at least for a time.

But it all makes for fun reading.

[Ghost Dog]

17. Yeah. Of course these people are used to making up the rules

as they go along. So things could maybe yet change, as imho they should. Let's have a proper Written Constitution, please!

Notice how 'The Thunderer' aka The Telegraph, weighs in here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/09/07/dl0107.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2006/09/07/ixopinion.html

How wonderfully ironic that members of Mr Blair's praetorian guard, so obsessed with their all-consuming feud with Gordon Brown and his acolytes, lost sight of the discontent in their own camp. Mr Blair will find it hard to recover. His authority is seeping away by the hour and he is no longer master of his own fate – and he knows it. Witness his intemperate statement attacking Mr Watson for being "disloyal, discourteous and wrong". The Prime Minister's outburst was ill-judged, undignified and smacked of panic.

The notion that Mr Blair can cling on until May 31 next year now appears absurd. Government is at a near-standstill as ministers wait to see which way to jump and stasis grips Whitehall. How hubristic those farcical plans for "Blair's farewell tour" now sound – and how predictable that they focused on the froth of PR and spin, not on the weighty political issues by which successful premierships are judged. The collapse of Mr Blair's authority was inevitable given his inexplicable error of announcing before the last election that he would not fight the next. It was only the timing of the meltdown that was in doubt. It is now evident that next May's mid-term elections to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and to local councils across England were the catalyst. The party has concluded that, with a lame-duck leader and a resurgent opposition, it faces a May massacre.

/...

[Matilda]

18. The final paragraph makes a good point -

what does Brown stand for?

My limited understanding is that he pretty well stands for the same
things as Blair, except that he thinks he should be the man doing them.
Would he pull the troops out of Iraq, for example? Seems that has been
Blair's main undoing, but it could be a tricky issue for Brown to
inherit, and he may live to regret it whatever he decides to do.

[legin]

20. I have a feeling you are correct in your concerns about Brown

Brown was a senior cabinet member when all the bad decisions were being made.

I supose it is a case of first get rid of blair, and then consider ones options.

[CJCRANE]

14. Time to go, Tony