Is it all over for Blair?

[dArKeR]

By Kamal Ahmed and Gaby Hinsliff
THE OBSERVER , LONDON
Thursday, May 06, 2004,Page 9

The latest parlor game for Labour backbenchers is to check a Web site predicting what would happen if a general election were held tomorrow. The site is called Financial Calculus and every few weeks it takes an amalgamation of the most recent polls and judges which parties will emerge triumphant at the election. For British Prime Minister Tony Blair, its predictions are becoming increasingly gloomy.

Perusing the site last week, Labour members of parliament (MPs) were told they were facing meltdown. A majority of 165 would be cut to just 24. More than 70 MPs would lose their seats and their livelihoods. Labour would be left with a small majority, facing a parliament of knife-edge votes and regular defeats.

Such bleak predictions are concentrating minds in the bars and restaurants of Westminster. Last week the talk was as open as it was disloyal. When will Blair go? Can he hang on until a general election? If he does, how much longer can he continue after an election victory? A year? Eighteen months? A whole third term?

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/05/06/2003154348

[T_i_B]

1. Blair dead in the water? No such luck

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fopinion%2F2004%2F04%2F29%2Fdo2902.xml&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=333043

Blair will not go this summer, and no, he will not go before the next general election. Here are at least three reasons. The first is that it is not in the nature of politicians to surrender their own political lives; they are like wasps in jam jars. They buzz on long after hope has gone. They go on because it is in their nature to do so, because all political careers must end in tears, and it is profoundly in the public interest that they should do, in the sense that politicians will work hardest and best if they know that their only exit is to be terminated in the Darwinian struggle for popular affection and interest.

He will not go because there are scores of his backbenchers who know that they were not propelled to Westminster because their electorates fell in love with their own blue eyes. They know that Tony won their seats, because he offered Middle England a kind of Tory Lite party that seemed economically sensible without some of the nastiness that they had come to associate with my great party.

They also know that they have absolutely no practical way of disposing of Blair, because a leadership election would necessitate the votes of 80 MPs, a quarter of the parliamentary party, and there are not enough of them with the guts to trigger it.

And the third reason why Blair will stay and fight is of course that there is no one to take his place. He is New Labour, for better or worse. Straw? Pshaw. Blunkett? Junk it. As for Gordon Brown, and the idea that the baton could be smoothly passed to the Chancellor - cheated of his birthright for a mess of seared tuna at Granita - it is fanciful. Even if it were possible, technically, to effect such a transition, it would be an insult to democracy, not least because Brown, like so many other Labour members, sits for a Scottish seat, and is currently passing laws for England when English MPs have no say over those questions in Scotland, and above all when he, Gordon, has no say over those questions in Scotland. I would go so far as to say that the West Lothian question is now so acute that no sitting Scottish MP has a hope of becoming prime minister.

[Raster]

2. Zappa: Poodle Chew

Give me
Your dirty love
Just like your mama
Make her fuzzy poodle do
(Oh, Frenchie . . . )

Give me
Your dirty love
The way your mama
Make that nasty poodle chew

I'll ignore your cheap aroma
And your little-bo-peep diploma
I'll just put you in a coma
With some dirty love
Some dirty love
That dirty love
That dirty love

THE POODLE BITES!
(Come on, Frenchie)
THE POODLE CHEWS IT!
(Snap it!)
THE POODLE BITES!
(Come on, Frenchie)
THE POODLE CHEWS IT!
(Snap it!)
THE POODLE BITES!
(Come on, Frenchie)
THE POODLE CHEWS IT!
(Snap it!)
THE POODLE BITES!
(Come on, Frenchie)
THE POODLE CHEWS IT!
(Not a speck of cereal!)
THE POODLE BITES!
(Come on, Frenchie)
THE POODLE CHEWS IT!
(Nothing but the best for my dog!)
THE POODLE BITES!
(Come on, Frenchie)
THE POODLE CHEWS IT!
(Come on!)
THE POODLE BITES!
(Come on, Frenchie)
THE POODLE CHEWS IT!
(Little paws sticking up!)
THE POODLE BITES!
(Little curly hairs!)
THE POODLE CHEWS IT!
(Little curly hairs!)