Blair defies a party plot

05/08/2006

May 09, 2006

LONDON (BBC): The British Labour Party is in open civil war after Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday accused his own MPs of plotting to remove him from power.

He issued a message of defiance by rejecting calls from more than 70 MPs to set a date for handing over leadership to Chancellor Gordon Brown.

Mr Blair authorised his spokesmen to launch a bitter public attack on his Labour opponents, with new Home Secretary John Reid accusing the plotters of wanting to force the party into an “Old Labour wilderness”.

In his most explicit intervention yet, Mr Brown turned up the pressure on the Prime Minister by revealing his desperation to take on the task of “renewing” Labour.

He made it plain it was up to Mr Blair to give the party and the country some idea of when he will deliver the “smooth and orderly transition” he promised in 2004.


Mr Brown’s supporters accused Downing Street of “madness”, “viciousness” and retreating “into the bunker”.

But Mr Blair’s allies claimed left-wingers who back Mr Brown were bent on dragging the party back to its dark days of opposition in the 1980s.

Downing Street fanned the flames by warning moderates who are lending their weight to the calls for the Prime Minister to go, to “watch out” and Mr Blair’s allies compared the Labour MPs who are pressing him to quit to the Tories who brought down Margaret Thatcher in 1990.

On TV, Mr Brown said: “Because we are in a unique situation where the leader has said he is not going to stay on, I think people will look to him.

“It’s not essentially a matter for me, it’s a matter for him and the party.”

In an earlier interview, he said it was his job to renew the party.

“There is going to be a transition to a new leader, whoever that leader is. I think the important thing is that we set down how we are going bring about that renewal,” he said.

Mr Blair is under attack from within his party after disastrous local election results last week followed by a drastic cabinet reshuffle on Friday.

Amid a series of crises, it emerged that at least 70 MPs say they are willing to sign a letter saying that by the end of July Mr Blair must set a “clear time-table” to leave Number 10.