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Blair delay could provoke leadership challenge

Will Woodward and David Hencke

The British Prime Minister believes naming departure date would cause paralysis.

Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair ... playing his cards close to his chest.

TONY BLAIR'S decision to rule out naming a departure date has quickened calls for him to go and could provoke a challenge to his leadership, rebel MPs warned on Friday.

The British Prime Minister's call this week for an end to speculation inflamed his critics, amid signs that mainstream MPs are joining the group of left-wingers and disgruntled ex-Ministers commonly written off as the "usual suspects" by the Blair camp.

MPs are sounding out colleagues about options which include an attempt to amass the 72 Labour MPs needed to move towards a leadership contest. Other possibilities include a delegation to Mr. Blair or to the chief whip (responsible for party discipline) Jacqui Smith, or a letter to a newspaper demanding a detailed timetable for his departure.

"I think Blair's miscalculated and there will be consequences," said one influential backbencher. "We have got to think about it for a little while. There are a lot of people talking to each other, a number of ideas as to exactly how we respond, but it won't be left at this."

A leading rebel said he was confident that about 80 MPs would back a leadership challenge although if Mr. Blair resisted they would need a vote at a party conference before a contest went ahead.

One calculation is that the Prime Minister should still be given the opportunity to offer "something bankable" by making his plans clear in the next few weeks, at his monthly press conference, or in speeches to the Trade Union Congress and Labour party conferences. This could mean the MPs delay acting until Parliament returns in October, when a protest is more easily mobilised.

Mr. Blair expects to go within the year. But he believes that to name a departure date would cause "paralysis" in government and offer a gift to the resurgent opposition Tory (Conservative) party. "If he was forced from office that would send a powerful message to the broad New Labour coalition that the Labour party is perhaps not what they thought it was," said one ally.

Supporters of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mr. Blair's presumed successor, Gordon Brown, are exasperated by the licence given to the Blairite former Cabinet Ministers, Stephen Byers and Charles Clarke, to raise contentious policy areas. The former deputy chief whip, George Mudie, a backbench supporter of Mr. Brown, called on Mr. Blair to "name the date and let's move on." He said: "Tony opened Pandora's box when he said he was going. He should never have opened that box. If he's going the last thing he should want to do is start a debate on long-term policy."

Expectations within the Cabinet that the leadership issue will overshadow events at the annual conference will harden as constituency parties receive a draft conference motion linking Mr. Blair's future to his handling of the Lebanon crisis. A motion proposed by Pete Willsman, a member of the party's national executive committee, says that Mr. Blair's "dogmatic approach ... makes him impervious to criticism and is the source of his repeated misjudgments."

A warning

In a letter sent to every constituency party secretary, Mr. Willsman warns: "The disastrous U.K. policy of following the U.S. has contributed to the latest tragedy in the Middle East ... the Labour movement has been demanding that this policy must be ended. Unfortunately Tony Blair has made it clear that he is not prepared to do this. The only way to change the policy is to elect a new leader." The motion will be debated only if it gets through the conference arrangements committee, where the leadership is expected to lean on them to veto it. But supporters believe it has a fighting chance.

Tony Woodley, general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, says in a TV interview on Sunday that a new leader is needed to "unite our party again, get the public behind us again for what will be a radical fourth term."

Agitation is spreading to new MPs and those in marginal seats in the south. Sarah McCarthy-Fry, elected last year to Portsmouth North, said: "I think we've reached a point where not saying anything is going to be more damaging. We are stuck in this quagmire and we cannot get out of it because everything swings back to the leadership."

Another new MP, Lyn Brown from West Ham in London, said: "He needs to quell speculation. This is just ridiculous."

But the former Cabinet Ministers, David Blunkett and Lord Cunningham, told the BBC that he had to be given some leeway. "I think he should do it in his own time, without pressure, in a reasonable fashion, ensuring that there is a long period for the handover," Mr. Blunkett said. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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