Blair prepares his exit.

Tony Blair yesterday promised that his next Labour Party conference will be his last. 14 months since he was re-elected, the man who promised to serve "a full term" has effectively announced that he will serve less than half that term.

He has, however, refused to give a specific date; although Gordon Brown's announcement that he will back any decision that Blair makes leads one to presume that a backdoor deal has been done and a date reached at in consultation between the two of them.

Blair's statement was the most revealing of the two:

"The first thing I would like to do is to apologise, actually, on behalf of the Labour party for the last week, which with everything that is going on back here and in the world, has not been our finest hour, to be frank."

An extraordinary opening in which he blames the Labour Party rather than his own stubbornness for the row that has broken out. Further proof of how far he has strayed from reality.

"Now, as for my timing and date of departure, I would have preferred to do this in my own way, but as has been pretty obvious from what many of my cabinet colleagues have said earlier in the week, the next party conference in a couple of weeks will be my last party conference as party leader, the TUC next week will be my last TUC, probably to the relief of both of us."

The admission that events have run out of his control and the confession that both he and the TUC can't stand each other. Quite a confession from a leader of the Labour Party and further proof, were any needed, of the chasm between Blair's beliefs and those of the party that he leads.

"But I am not going to set a precise date now. I don't think that's right. I will do that at a future date and I'll do it in the interests of the country and depending on the circumstances of the time.

Blair now claims to be clinging to power "in the interests of the country" as if his interests and the interests of the country are synonymous. He failed to set out what he hopes to achieve in the few months that he has left that could not be achieved by anyone else.

Left unspoken on the sidelines is the fact that next May he will have served as PM for ten years, a landmark that he is keen to add to his resume, obsessed as he is with his legacy. Whether Blair achieving this personal goal is "in the best interests of the country" only shows how, in his mind, the two are actually the same.

"I also say one other thing after the last week, I think it is important for the Labour party to understand, and I think the majority of people in the party do understand, that it's the public that comes first and it's the country that matters and we can't treat the public as irrelevant bystanders in a subject as important as who is their prime minister."

He forgets that, in order to be re-elected, he had to promise that he would not seek a fourth term in office. The Tories had planned a campaign slogan that read:

"Vote for Blair, Get Brown".

They had to withdraw it after market research told them that this was actually what the public wanted. So it's especially disingenous for Blair to adopt this tactic now.

What is clear is that some kind of backdoor deal has been done and that Brown will allow Blair his tenth anniversary in return for a firm promise that Blair will be gone by next summer. It's a crashing defeat for the Blairites who had hoped to stave off this day indefinitely.

There was one moment of supreme irony as Blair was laying out the reasons for why it was important to get on with the "important job of running the country". He said:

"We've got the blockade on the Lebanon lifted today. You know, there are important things going on in the world."

Firstly, the idea that Blair had anything to do with the lifting of the blockade is ludicrous but, more importantly, it was Blair's refusal to even call for a ceasefire in Lebanon that in many ways fuelled the outrage that contributed to eight junior members of his government resigning and calling for him to go.

Poor deluded Tony continues to live on his own planet, surrounded by sycophants, who tell him that Iraq is winnable and that Britain is lucky to have him as their leader.

There are none so blind as those who will not see. The goodbye tour starts here. Tickets will be easy to obtain as it's unlikely to be a sell out.

Click title for Blair's statement in full.

Tags: Blair, Brown, resignation, date, stand down, succession