Blair to stand firm at Labour meeting
05/08/2006
Matthew Tempest and Oliver King
Monday May 8, 2006
Tony Blair will tell Labour MPs this evening that voters expect the party to get on with the business of government as he makes his second attempt of the day to dismiss calls to name a date for handing over to Gordon Brown.
Ahead of the weekly Monday evening meeting of the parliamentary Labour party, the mood in the Commons was not one of frenzied anticipation and there were no apparent signs of backbenchers plotting.
Some MPs are pointing out that the meeting will be more of a damp squib than the rebel v loyalist showdown billed by the media but others are threatening to call for an early departure.
Those Labour MPs who saw Tony Blair’s press conference in front of Westminster’s lobby journalists at lunchtime believe it was a coherent performance even if they disagree with him. Many now think it will calm the intensity of the Labour divisions seen over the weekend with Blair and Brown allies briefing against each other and rebel MPs calling for the prime minister to quit sooner rather than later.
Michael Meacher, often touted as a possible stalking horse against Tony Blair at the party conference in the autumn told Guardian Unlimited he would not be directly confronting the prime minister this evening.
“I will be going to the PLP to hear and see what is said but beyond that I won’t be commenting,” he said.
The Blairite loyalist and one of the anti-Gordon “outriders”, Alan Milburn, joked that while he would be going he wouldn’t be “twisting any arms”.
The assiduous backbencher Gordon Prentice was angry with yesterday’s defence of Blair by the new home secretary, John Reid.
“I regard myself as a mainstream Labour MP but what John Reid said at the weekend about anyone asking for a framework was anti-party or old Labour was aggressive and outrageous,” he said, adding: “The history of these things is they are more damp squib than high noon but I would like him to go sooner rather than later and by sooner I mean next May [Blair’s 10th anniversary in power] is too late. We’ve got the cash-for-peerages and the education bill to get through yet and I for one won’t be voting for the government on the latter,” he told Guardian Unlimited.
The loyalist Nick Palmer, MP for Broxtowe, said the stories of “civil war” would finish after today. “I think this story will fizzle out because the rebels can’t get 70 signatures on their letter and Gordon Brown has called for the outriders to stop, and at the end of the day it’s more important for Gordon Brown to inherit a cohesive party than what day he inherits it on.”
“Also there are no flashpoints beyond the education bill between now and the summer and my suspicion is that saying next April, he would leave the April after [ie 2008] would satisfy everyone. But we need to stop all this navel gazing - it’s boring and divisive.”
One independent-minded leftwinger, Paul Flynn MP, explained that he would decide whether to challenge Blair to his face after he had heard him speak.
“The problem with the PLP is that those who are the bravest on the airwaves don’t always get up and say their piece at the meeting. That’s because they’re a bit like an evangelical meeting. Blair speaks first, usually followed by a loyalist and there is a lot of pressure not to stand up and shout: ‘But I don’t believe in God!’
“Gordon Brown normally turns up and it’ll be fascinating to watch his body language. I’d like him [Blair] to go in October and I might tell him depending on what he says first.”