Blair yields, vows he'll step down within a year
Britain's beleaguered prime minister moves to quell Labor Party revolt
By Beth Gardiner
The Associated Press
Prime Minister Tony Blair, shown arriving Thursday at a London school, refused to set a specific date for his departure. (AP / Alastair Grant)
London - Prime Minister Tony Blair, his reputation in Britain badly damaged by his refusal to break ranks with President Bush, gave in Thursday to a fierce revolt in his Labor Party and reluctantly promised to quit within a year.
Blair, whose popularity began sinking when he committed his nation to the U.S.-led war in Iraq three years ago, had long resisted calls to publicly set a time frame for his departure from office. He feared that such an announcement would make him a lame duck and sap his remaining authority.
But ultimately, the foreign leader best known to Americans could find no other way to end days of public turmoil that were severely damaging Labor, which has been in power for nearly a decade but now trails the opposition Conservatives in the polls.
"I would have preferred to do this in my own way," Blair said, as he conceded that the party's annual conference this month would be his last. The next one is set for September 2007.
He refused to set a specific departure date, saying, "The precise timetable has to be left to me and has to be done in the proper way."
Blair appeared to have struck a deal with his expected successor, Treasury chief Gordon Brown, who signaled his support in a statement minutes before Blair spoke to television cameras at a north London school.
The key question is whether the prime minister's
exit strategy will be detailed and speedy enough to satisfy the impatient Labor legislators who forced his hand.
Early signals were that it would buy the 53-year-old Blair time - but not much. He's eager to reach the 10-year anniversary of his 1997 assumption of office, which would be in May.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said Blair and Bush still had a lot of work to do together.
"He's a valued ally," Snow said. "And at this point, we're not sitting around writing encomia for Tony Blair. We're instead busy working with him."
With the outbreak of the Iraq war in 2003, Blair began to lose the iron control he once exercised over his party.
Long derided by critics as the U.S. president's "poodle," he suffered a further blow at July's Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg, Russia. An open microphone caught a chat in which he seemed embarrassingly subservient to Bush, who greeted him by shouting, "Yo, Blair!" |
