Worried MPs plot to force Blair exit date

It shouldn't be this difficult to oust an unpopular leader. The end of Blair is nigh, a fact that even his most loyal supporters would find hard to deny, and yet the Labour Party remains in a tizzy about how to get the old bugger to bugger off.

Gordon Brown and his supporters are anxious to distance themselves from the plotting that is currently taking place ahead of the party conference where many MP's, anxious that they may lose their seats in future elections, are trying to come up with a method of displacing Blair from his Premiership.

Some Labour MPs had considered signing a letter calling on Mr Blair to stand down in May after the local elections, but the organisers held back after they believed the prime minister had given a clear indication at a meeting of the parliamentary party that he would stand down within a year.

MP's should ignore any hints that the Blair camp gives about possible dates when he may evacuate number ten as he has been giving them for so long that they are meaningless. Indeed, his supporters are insisting that Blair has "a full agenda, including cutting hospital waiting times, social exclusion, the Middle East, and the impact of globalisation on security."

This bugger isn't going anywhere unless he is pushed.

MP's are beginning to catch on to this:

This has prompted some MPs to argue that they need to raise the political pressure, probably through the form of a letter demanding that a timetable for Mr Blair's departure is clear by the end of his party conference speech.

They point to growing signs that formerly loyal MPs, notably in London and the south-east, are voicing fears that Mr Blair needs to go quickly if the party is to see off the growing challenge posed by David Cameron. A Guardian/ICM poll last week showed Labour at a 19-year low and the Tories with a nine-point lead, their strongest position for 14 years.

Many are saying that they do not want a Thatcherite butchering for the sake of the party, although this ignores the fact that - even after the Tories removed Thatcher in such a brutal manner - John Major went on to be re-elected.

Blair lost control of his party after the invasion of Iraq and his recent reluctance to call for a ceasefire in Lebanon only increased party disillusionment with a leader who has never held the values of the party that he led.

It is time now for the sheer scale of opposition to Blair to find some way of making itself be known.

The illusion that it was Blair that made Labour electable was always a lie propagated by his own camp. The party's belief in this lie has always given Blair more sway over the rank and file of his party than his political acumen actually deserved.

It is time for Labour to discard the fantasy and to wield the knife. Blair has now become a political liability.

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Tags: Blair, Labour, Brown, Leadership, elections