Blair Says He Will Step Down Within 12 Months

Buck said she believed Blair would leave next May and hoped that other party members would not squabble over "a few months here or there."

Blair has won three consecutive elections and served longer than any other prime minister since 1827, except for Margaret Thatcher.

But the scene outside the school where Blair spoke Thursday highlighted his recent unpopularity. While teachers and some students applauded, others joined a noisy antiwar protest. Some held up a four-foot-high model of a dog biscuit as a gift for "Tony the Poodle," a reference to what many Britons see as his blind obedience to President Bush.

Blair's popularity has also plummeted because of problems closer to home. Many Britons blame his policies for what they see as an excessive flow of immigrants into Britain over the past 10 years. A police investigation into Labor's campaign financing and sex scandals involving leading members of his cabinet also hurt his reputation.

"And lots of people are just tired of him," said Iain McLean, a professor of politics at Oxford University. Tired, he said, of a Blair who pursues policies, at home and abroad, as if he were on "God's mission to put the world right."

"I certainly welcome what he said," said Mark Tami, a Labor member of Parliament who resigned Wednesday from Blair's government. But Tami said Blair would soon need to be more specific about his resignation date. "Over the next several weeks we will be able to tell if the uncertainty over his departure has ended," he said.

The seeds of Thursday's statement were sown in October 2004, when Blair made two announcements in an interview with the BBC: He would go into the hospital the following day for a minor heart operation, and his third term as prime minister would be his last.

Blair has faced questions ever since about exactly when he would go.

Brown, 55, the prime minister's old friend and increasingly bitter rival, said Thursday that Blair had put the country in a "unique situation" by saying "he does not want to lead our party and our government into the next general election." While many analysts said they believed Brown helped orchestrate a virtual coup against Blair this week, Brown's supporters denied that.

"When I met the prime minister yesterday, I said to him -- as I've said on many occasions, and I repeat today -- it is for him to make the decision" about when to step down, Brown told reporters during a visit to his native Scotland. "I said also to him . . . that I will support him in the decision he makes."

Although Brown is the most likely successor, other top Labor officials, including Home Secretary John Reid, could mount a challenge.

Brown, the rumpled, bear-like son of an austere Scottish preacher, is a serious, brooding policy wonk far different from the flashy, telegenic Blair. But his foreign and domestic policies would be similar to Blair's, said Tony Travers, a government specialist at the London School of Economics.

As Britain's longest-serving chancellor of the exchequer, Brown has been widely credited with disciplined stewardship of financial policy. Citing years of strong growth, low inflation and low unemployment, Travers said: "You can't argue with the figures. It's an extraordinary achievement."

Just before he was whisked away in his dark green Jaguar on Thursday, the man who presided over the transformation of gray Britain into "cool Britannia" seemed to be pleading for his enemies to stop plotting his demise. "We can't treat the public as irrelevant bystanders in a subject as important as who is their prime minister," Blair said.

British gamblers, meanwhile, are wagering vast sums on his departure date. "It's not very becoming," Travers said. "Say what you like about the American system, but you know when the president's going."