The Osterley Times: Dead Man Walking.

The end of the Blair Premiership is nigh and, as I have long predicted, he does not intend to go without leaving his fingernail marks along the door of number 10.

Open warfare has broken out between Blair and his Chancellor (the man most widely tipped to succeed him) - Gordon Brown.

It all started when Blair refused, in a provocative article in the Times, to give any timetable for the "smooth and orderly transition" he has long promised but never seemed certain of delivering.

It was typical of the bunker mentality that has gripped Blair's inner circle ever since the WMD failed to materialise in Iraq. Blair, like his American counterpart across the ocean, has continued to talk about events in a way that is totally removed from the reality on the ground.

However, it would appear that this latest article has been seen as a provocation too far and unleashed a series of events that now threatens to turf Blair from office far sooner than he intended. At the very least, it has shown just how much political capital has drained from Blair, and just how much he now finds himself at the mercy of events rather than their architect.

It started with the Blair camp's outrage at Defence Minister, Tom Watson, who had signed a letter stating that it was time for Blair to go. The chief whip, Jacqui Smith, demanded that Watson must withdraw his name from the document. Watson refused and resigned stating, "I have to say that I no longer believe that your remaining in office is in the interest of either the party or the country."

Blair hit back and he hit back hard.

"I have heard from the media that Tom Watson has resigned. I had been intending to dismiss him but wanted to extend to him the courtesy of speaking to him first. Had he come privately and expressed his view about the leadership, that would have been one thing. But to sign a round-robin letter which was then leaked to the press was disloyal, discourteous and wrong. It would therefore have been impossible for him to remain in government."

By claiming that he would have dismissed him anyway, Blair was attempting to still appear to be in charge of events on the ground. I think, however, that history will judge Blair's response as ill judged as he appears to have lit the touch paper and set off a chain of events way beyond his control.

By the end of the day yesterday eight junior members of the government had quit demanding that the time has come for Blair to go.

The letter they published was dynamite:

"We believe that you have been an exceptional Labour prime minister. The party and the nation owes you an incalculable debt of gratitude. It is clear to us - as it is to almost the entire party and the entire country - that without an urgent change in the leadership of the party it becomes less likely that we will win that [next] election.
"That is the brutal truth. It gives us no pleasure to say it. But it has to be said. And understood. This is not a plot against you by people who want to reverse or slow down the progress you have led. We are all as determined as you are that nothing should stand in its way ... as utter Labour loyalists and implacable modernisers, we therefore have to ask you to stand aside."

Despite the fact that the letter writers had gone to great lengths to point out that they were modernisers and not Old Labour, the Blair camp wasted no time in attempting to portray events as a coup organised from with the Chancellor's office.

'This is an attempted coup!" So said one of Tony Blair's closest Downing Street aides yesterday, his voice shaking with anger: "This is a well-planned, coordinated campaign organised by just one man - Gordon Brown. This is 1970s trade union politics carried out by shop stewards. The public will find it an absolute bloody disgrace. It is very, very telling about the style in which this man and these people will run the country!"

Very few of us accepted this reading of events but it was telling that, if the Prime Minister's aides really believed that Gordon Brown was behind this, that Blair did not simply sack him. It was a further indication of Blair's rapidly diminishing political stock.

There were reports all day of acrimonious meetings between the Prime Minister and his Chancellor and the Blair camp's offer that the Prime Minister will resign by next August did little to quell matters on the ground.

Blair's position now seems untenable and his wish to stay in office smacks of gripping to power for no greater reason than a desire to stave off the inevitable.

If, as is rumoured, Blair today sets out a timetable for leaving, he will immediately become a lame duck Prime Minister raising the inevitable question of why it should be better that he leaves in March rather than in, say, a months time.

The greatest insult hurled by the Blair camp has been to imply that Gordon Brown is "old Labour", refusing to admit that Brown is actually the co-architect of the New Labour philosophy. By doing this the Blair camp are implying that New Labour will die when Blair leaves office. It is a strange way for Blair to behave if he truly wants to see New Labour continue beyond his term of office; indeed, he is doing great harm to his party's electoral chances by making such a claim and is handing a golden chalice to the Tories.

It makes me further suspect that Blair's wish for the continuation of New Labour has been no more than a ruse to ensure that he himself remains in office, as he seems to believe that he is the only person capable of ensuring it's continuation. That is certainly the implication of his briefings.

The Blair camp are making much of "the damage that is being done to the party" whilst refusing to acknowledge that Blair clinging to office is the main reason that this damage is being inflicted.

It is now clearly open warfare between Blair and Brown, with Blair openly moving to block Brown's Premiership.

Stephen Pound, the MP for Ealing North, said: "What do these people want, blood? He [Blair] has already said he will go and should be left to make a dignified exit. What is clear is that Tom Watson would not have moved to stick a knife between Blair's shoulder blades without the say-so of Gordon."
Mr Pound said there was intense anger among Mr Blair's supporters and that people were already looking for candidates to challenge the chancellor. Former cabinet colleagues Alan Milburn and Stephen Byers, the men known as the Blairite outriders for promoting New Labour policies, seen certain to rule themselves out.

The Blair camp continue to portray themselves as moderates facing an undemocratic horde who are hell bent on dragging Britain back into some Trade Union dominated 1970's hellhole. It is simply a further indication of the bunker mentality that has dominated their mind set since the Iraq war.

We now have a neo-con mentality pervading number 10. "With us or against us." "Moderniser or Old Labour." "Supporter of insane wars across the Middle East or closet terrorist sympathiser."

It's a sad debacle.

Blair's halcyon days of leading the Labour Party are truly over. The danger is that he will bring the whole party crashing down around him before he will accept that stone cold fact.

The truth is that Blair has now lost the support of the moderates in his party, probably accelerated by his mimicking of Bush's stance in refusing to call for a ceasefire in Lebanon. He has never been more exposed and his Premiership is now, literally, in meltdown.

Blair has over the years come to despise the Labour Party, who's values are so very different from his own. It now appears possible that he will employ his Fallujah mentality to the problems he faces, and that he will have to destroy the party in order to save it.

Since the Iraq war, Blair has been scrambling to find a face saving way to leave office. There is none. Just how long it takes him to accept this fact will determine how much damage is inflicted on the Labour Party as a whole.