Blair's support slumps as Brown keeps up pressure for handover

[struggle4progress]

By Andrew Grice, Political Editor
Published: 10 May 2006

Gordon Brown has stepped up the pressure on Tony Blair to honour his promise to give his successor "ample time" to settle in by agreeing a firm date when he will stand down.

The trial of strength came as Mr Blair's personal approval rating slumped to the lowest level for a Labour leader in modern times. A YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph last night found just 26 per cent of voters were satisfied with the Prime Minister's performance, lower even than the 27 per cent rating for Harold Wilson in May 1968 after the devaluation crisis. The poll put the Conservatives on 37 per cent, Labour on 31 and the Liberal Democrats on 17. A Populus poll in yesterday's Times showed Labour support at a 14-year low, tumbling to 30 per cent, against 38 per cent for the Tories.

Labour MPs said that the Chancellor had finally gained the upper hand over when Mr Blair should depart. They claimed the Prime Minister was shaken by strong demands for him to reveal his departure timetable when he addressed the Parliamentary Labour Party on Monday.

Yesterday Mr Brown sought to drive home his advantage by disclosing in a television interview that Mr Blair would be holding talks with "senior colleagues" about the transition. He pointedly told GMTV that Labour must avoid a repeat of the "unstable, disorderly and undignified" way Margaret Thatcher was driven out of office by her own party in 1990. <snip>

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article363102.ece

[unschooler]

1. What a waste. He could have been a truly great PM.

I've never understood what Shrub fed him on the ranch in Crawford. It's like he became the Manchurian Prime Minister.

[dipsydoodle]

2. Instead he just became a

Tiny Blur and lost the respect of the majority of his own population.

[antonialee839]

3. Bush fed him Carlyle Pie.

[unschooler]

4. He must have eaten a lot of it. He seemed totally different after that.

:shrug:

[marmar]

5. Exactly...

Maybe we misoverestimated him. Clearly his values are for sale. I'm sure they've already polished a Carlyle board of directors seat for him.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

7. The problem is deeper than his association with Bush.

From the very beginning, New Labour has been a somewhat empty ideology, more to do with winning elections than actually governing. (Which is still far more appealing than the Tory ideology of hunting poor people on horseback with dogs.)

Over the past few years, Tony has basically proven that while he can win elections (and it's questionable how well he can do that any more) he is actually really, really bad at the day-to-day business of running the government.

There is no doubt that Tony would be in a stronger position today had he never involved the UK in the Iraq war, but the fundamental problems of his government would still remain. They are overly obsessed with spin, incapable of implementing true reforms, and extremely insular. The phrase "out of touch" comes to mind. Then there's the current raft of scandals - none of them individually are that bad, and people would likely overlook some of them if the government were behaving in a competent manner. At the moment, Tony's government is viewed as corrupt and incompetent, and the dissatisfaction goes a lot deeper than just the war.

[BooScout]

8. Exactly....

But you won't convince people here of that. JFC everything is not about Bush in this world. Tony's got a lot of problems very few which have to do with Iraq & Bush (and I'm not dismissing that as being trivial mind you). But when you see the condition of the NHS, Council Taxes escalating, criminals & yobs running rampant, pensions disappearing, etc.......you begin to wonder how in the hell he has hung on this long. Perhaps it's all coming to a head at once.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

10. Most people in the US don't see those things.

Hell, most people in the US don't even know who Alastair Campbell is, don't see the connections between his way of operating and the neoconservatives, etc, etc. It's understandable ignorance, really. The US media does not tell Americans about the rest of the world.

[unschooler]

25. BWAHAHAHA!!! What a picture that paints!

(Which is still far more appealing than the Tory ideology of hunting poor people on horseback with dogs.)

:spray: :spray: :spray:

[saltpoint]

6. I agree with unschooler in this thread. Blair's downfall was his own

doing -- by cozying up to Bush. I don't know the high-level variables, but from down here it looks like a little kid cozying up to the bullies on the playground. It's always a disaster to seek the esteem of bullies.

Not that world opinion gives a good goddam what I think, but I'd like to see Tony Blair resign this afternoon at the latest and take a job teaching at a university. I expect he would be a tremendous teacher and let's let him be where he can be of genuine good to others.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

9. Unfortunately, he isn't going to resign.

This cabinet shuffle appears to be specifically designed to allow him to cling to power for as long as possible.

[Matilda]

11. The reshuffle is a symptom of his biggest problem.

He thinks if he puts enough gloss on it, people will think it's real.

I also feel it's a terrible waste - I think he's intelligent, sharp
and humorous, but for some reason he sold out. Not just to Bush, but
to the corporations, and to Rupert Murdoch.

Trouble is, having announced that he won't contest the next election,
he's now a lame duck prime minister. Of course people want to know
who and what they'll be voting for next time around, so he should just
go now.

[saltpoint]

12. Events may overwhelm Blair. He enjoys very diminished popular

support.

I don't think he survives a year unless there is a spectacular turnaround in Iraq.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

13. That won't be enough.

Iraq is nowhere near the biggest problem on his plate at the moment.

[saltpoint]

14. You must have some cosmic insight into the PM's future, yibbehobba.

Do you?

Are others not permitted their hunches?

Iraq is also Blair's albatross. His popularity was strained from the beginning owing to Bush's ill-planned and very ill-fated Middle East disaster. I acknowledge other difficulties form the Blair government, but his woes in the polls began with Iraq/Bush.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

15. No, but I read the newspapers.

Fixing Iraq doesn't fix the NHS. It doesn't change the corruption problems in Labour. It doesn't change the cash-for-honours scandal. It has virtually no impact on Blair's inability to deliver on domestic issues, which is universally considered to be the source of his current woes.

Iraq has not been good for Blair. However, it doesn't rank that highly on the list of peoples' concerns. If you don't believe me, read the editorial pages of any UK newspapers over the past six months.

[saltpoint]

17. Some of us read newspapers also. We have several here in the U.S.,

in fact. Those of us with web access also read The Guardian (my favorite), the London TIMES, and the Independent, among others.

Regrettably, our president appears to have strong-armed Blair into a very intractable and horrifying disaster in the Middle East, one both of them ought to have known better than to undertake.

If conditions in Iraq do not "stabilize," and if the insurgent violence continues at the present level or even increases, Blair's chances of holding on are less than if Iraq's "new government" were somehow to form more convincingly and take some sort of identifiable control over conflicted regions.

Bush's popularity here is not Iraq-only either, but it is so visibly his war that his approval polls are in the tank. Blair and Bush are reviled in many other countries for their dual complicity in Iraq, and as long as Iraq is a nearly unmitigated disaster, Bush's numbers are likely to stay low, and Blair's position regarding Labour is likely to continue under strain.

And this excerpt from http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/10047, dated May 7, 2006:

* * * * * * *
"Increasingly, the issue of Iraq is a weeping sore for the Blair government," said Martin Bright, political editor at the New Statesman, a left-leaning magazine. "The worse the situation gets in Iraq, the more likely it is that his party will move against him."
* * * * * * *

[sweetheart]

24. but iraq is a breaking point

With christian people, or people with morals against
criminal aggressive war, he's a proven liar and war criminal,
by his own admissions, it makes whatever he says, irrelevant.

[sweetheart]

16. Blair's done a Clinton

I frankly think it isss the iraq war, the reason he has to go now,
the lies, the deception, and that it has resulted in thousands of
unnecessary deaths puts a moral pressure on his leaving from the
vast majority of decent folk.

But root to his success, the lies, the political triangulation and
the authoritarian management tendencies, combined with a very-tory
instinct on running to the right, has decimated his own party,
demoralized it like democratic progressives were in 2000, sold out
lock stock and barell to the DLC corporatists which can be read
in this case as "new labour"... same same. Blair was 5 years later
coming to power than clinton, so it took him as much longer to
erode his base.

[rfkrfk]

18. bums are too lazy to throw Blair out

somebody should remove the bums' feeding tubes

[saltpoint]

19. My impression is that it's a bit more procedural than that, rfk.

[rfkrfk]

21. leadership challenge, is not easy ....

so they expect Tony to roll over
and play dead?

sometimes, things don't work out that way

[saltpoint]

22. Did someone say it was easy? I didn't.

[Sapere aude]

20. He will get a good position in the Carlisle group along with Hillary and

Lieberman and any future Bush butt lickers.

[saltpoint]

23. The Economist, of all places, offered this mid-March look at Blair's

possible future:

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5625257