The Letter to Blair that No-one Really Wrote

10 May 2006
Evening Standard

Who would have guessed that an imaginary letter could occupy the headlines for three full days?

Tony Blair, we are told, has been written to by backbenchers demanding a timetable for his handover. The writing is on the wall - or, at least, on the mock-up printed by some papers. Yet I think that, once again, Blair's opponents may have blown it. For the letter is non-existent. You did not have to be Mystic Meg to know that the aftermath of last week's local elections would trigger some kind of challenge to Blair. Everyone knew the results would be bad. Plan A for the party's Left, which had been trailed for months, was to gather enough signatures (71) for a formal leadership challenge at this year's party conference. But by the eve of the elections, it was clear that the planners (of whom I was not one) were going to fall short. It might have been better at that point to hold fire.

But the Clarke/Hewitt/Prescott media hysteria must have seemed too good an opportunity to miss. So Plan B emerged. This was to get MPs to sign a letter to Blair calling for a "timetable". I heard about this second-hand. It seemed a dubious idea to me. For such a letter to have any effect, you had to assume that Blair gives a damn what Labour MPs think. All the evidence points to the contrary. Yet Plan B was just that - a plan. There was no letter. No one had signed it. But someone span the story to the media. So Leftwingers, spending a quiet Sunday at home polishing up our "We Love Trotsky" badges, were astonished to learn from news bulletins that they were the authors of this nefarious conspiracy. The truth is more complex.

There is ideological opposition to New Labour - but also a genuine groundswell of opinion in the parliamentary party that wants to see Blair go sooner rather than later. He is seen as the main cause of a haemorrhaging of members. There is real fear of losing our local authority base. And there is a suspicion that his real intention is to hang on as long as it takes to avoid handing over to Gordon Brown - the only Labour MP Blair would take any notice of. There is as yet no obvious challenger to Brown to rescue the Blairite succession. Yet Brown has only ever been ready to wound. Perhaps he has the necessary steel hidden somewhere. But he may yet be doomed as the Rab Butler of Labour politics, the "uncrowned prime minister" ultimately outmanoeuvred by a more ruthless rival.





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