Blair v Brown: the public and the private disputes
Gordon Brown continues to pile pressure on to Blair to name a date for his departure. Blair, who no doubt hoped he had put this matter to rest with his press conference, will now see how little that press conference actually achieved.
Yesterday, Brown again took to the airwaves:
In an interview with GMTV yesterday Mr Brown repeatedly insisted that Mr Blair had said he would talk to senior colleagues about the transition. No 10 regards this demand for a private pledge to senior party colleagues on when he will stand down, and the process of transition, as unreasonable and unworkable.
Mr Brown said in a carefully worded warning: "Tony has said he is going to do it in a stable and orderly way. That means he is going to be talking not just to me, but to senior colleagues about it. Remember when Mrs Thatcher left, it was unstable, it was disorderly and it was undignified."In the interview, his fourth since Friday, he also said: "There are problems that have got to be sorted out and they have got to be sorted out quickly." His remarks were seen in Downing Street as a coded warning that Mr Blair could yet be thrown out like Lady Thatcher unless he agreed to make a firm private commitment to stand down on a specific date.
Asked if Mr Blair had given him a firm date for the handover, Mr Brown replied: "No, and I think that what he is going to do is to talk to senior colleagues about it."
The chancellor's intervention comes as the latest poll shows Tony Blair to be the most unpopular Labour prime minister in modern times. Only 26% of voters are satisfied with Mr Blair's performance - lower than Harold Wilson's 27% in May 1968 after the pound's devaluation.
According to the YouGov poll for today's Daily Telegraph, Labour now trails the Tories by 6%. The poll puts the Conservatives on 37%, Labour on 31% and the Liberal Democrats on 17%.
The mention of Thatcher is the clearest signal yet that, if Blair does not give a date, that a similar fate awaits him. The gloves are coming off now.
Those close to Blair are now privately admitting that he may step down in the summer of 2007 or early 2008, but there should be no inclination to believe him. We've heard all this before.
There is another reason for Mr Brown's anger. His team has been exercised by letters from Mr Blair to cabinet ministers. The letters - being released by No 10 this week and next - are "designed to identify the key challenges for departments and how they propose to deliver against these".
But the letter that most concerned the Brownites was one dispatched on Friday - amid the cabinet reshuffle - from Mr Blair to Ms Blears. In what Mr Brown's supporters regard as provocative language, it set out how the party must be organised by 2009-10. Some Brownites now want it withdrawn, saying drily: "It may not be a sensible idea to send a personal mandate to the party chairman to do what whatever she wants."
Mr Brown's team believe the organisation of the party machine must be his preserve because he will take the party into the next election. The letter was discussed in No 10 - as if some were aware that its existence, as much as its contents, might not go down well in No 11.
The letter shows that Blair's camp, like Hitler's generals in the final days in the bunker, continue to refuse to accept the new reality that they are now facing. They continue to think they have control of the agenda.
The much hoped for "orderly transition" cannot be achieved against such a stubborn mindset.
Blair is demanding "business as usual" in the middle of a revolution. Like Thatcher before him, he is guilty of refusing to accept that his hold on power is finite.
Therefore, like Thatcher, he will have to be removed against his will.
And for the sake of the Labour Party, it should be done as quickly as possible.
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