Blair Loyalists Make Their Escape

Evening Standard

Evening Standard readers should stop what they are doing and turn off the TV, radio and any noise-making appliances. Then they will hear in the far distance a faint pattering sound getting louder by the minute. It is the sound of rats leaving a sinking ship. In this case, it is one-time Blair loyalists making good their escape. What in the past have turned out to be idle threats have at least resulted this time in a number of MPs writing to Blair, supposedly asking him to leave. They are said to include serious-minded characters like Tom Watson, a government minister and Brownite.

In practice, it may yet not amount to much: Blair has a large waste paper basket marked "backbenchers' letters".  And it is a game that both sides can play: 49 MPs are now said to have backed a statement of support for Blair. What is more interesting is the identity of some of these latter-day anti-Blairites: some of the MPs now trying to project themselves as principled dissenters stretch credulity. For MPs who happily voted for an illegal and catastrophic war - Sion Simon? Chris Bryant? - to suddenly discover that they have scruples about Blair and all his works is not persuasive. If he was right about the issues then, he must be right now, and they ought to be prepared to go down with the good ship Blair.

It is true that Tony Blair’s unbending support for George Bush over the Lebanon depressed and disheartened many. And it is also true that MP’s in marginal seats have been panicked by recent opinion polls. To try and steady MP's nerves, Blair lieutenants like David Milliband are insisting that Blair will definitely be gone in 12 months. But there is a widespread suspicion that, unless he gives a formal departure date, Blair will continue to persuade himself that he should stay just a little longer.  And nobody seriously thinks that he will be swayed by considerations like the best interests of the Labour Party. So while Gordon Brown flatly refuses to make a move, Tony Blair will stay Prime Minister for longer than is wise. Maybe Brown stays his hand because he does not want to inherit a party convulsed by civil war. And maybe he knows that, in party politics, regicides rarely prosper. But perhaps there is some emotional conflict which stops him putting Blair out of his misery.

I will not be signing any letters. No doubt Cherie will make good use of them papering the bathroom in their new house on Connaught Square.

 

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