Has The Butler Knifed Blair?

[CHIMO]

Even if Tony Blair hasn’t come out on top at the end of one of his toughest weeks, what continues to confound his admirers and critics is his ability to survive, against any odds.
After the damning contents of Lord Butler’s report, after the by-election loss of one of Labour’s safest seats and the nail-bitingly narrow victory in another, and now calls for Blair’s blood amid claims that Downing Street pre-judged what intelligence Lord Hutton was allowed to know about, a majority of constituency chairmen in Labour’s marginal seats say that, even though a lot is wrong with Blair, they have no choice but to stick with him.

This week Blair’s temporarily becalmed public relations machine will be re-booted to mount a quiet celebration of his 10 years as Labour leader. The message from the celebrations, and an expected reshuffle of the Cabinet also to be announced this week, will be that Blair has the vision, the stamina and the support to re-energise himself over the summer recess. He will then re- invigorate his party’s activists during September’s annual conference in Brighton, going on to effectively attempt a rewrite of the successes of his second term in office. This will minimise the war and maximise, as one party official claims, “almost anything else but Iraq” in the run-up to the next general election and an almost guaranteed third term .
John Kerry and his presidential running mate, John Edwards, praised Blair and his style of leadership, hailing Blair’s acceptance of responsibility for intelligence failures over Iraq and obviously attacking Bush for failing to confess to the same after the recent report by the US Senate on the CIA’s failings. But Edwards may have missed the point. Blair doesn’t do sorry. Blair doesn’t run.

http://www.sundayherald.com/43472