Blair Says He Will Step Down Within 12 Months

By Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, September 8, 2006

LONDON, Sept. 7 -- Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has led Britain for nearly a decade through economic prosperity and the pain of war, announced Thursday that he would resign within 12 months.

Battered by diving public approval ratings and an increasingly acrimonious feud with his presumed successor, Chancellor Gordon Brown, Blair appeared stunned at the fevered demands in recent days that he make clear when he would step down. On Wednesday, eight junior members of his administration quit, the latest members of his party to say publicly that Blair has become a liability for them at the polls.

"The first thing I'd like to do is to apologize, actually," Blair said during a visit to a London school, adding that the Labor Party's public spat in the past week "has not been our finest hour."

"What is important now is that we understand that it's the interests of the country that come first and we move on," he said. Then, addressing what he called "my timing and date of departure," he said he would not be Labor's leader when it held its 2007 annual conference. That means he will leave at some point before this time next year.

"I think the precise timetable should be left up to me," he said. With an uncharacteristically weary look for a man famous for his ear-to-ear smile, Blair added, "I would have preferred to do this in my own way."

It was a muffled, small beginning to the final chapter of a historic premiership. Since his party's landslide election in 1997, Blair, 53, has outlasted every other major European leader in office and become one of the world's most recognized statesmen.

It was unclear if Blair's announcement would satisfy his critics.

"Some of Gordon Brown's supporters no doubt hold the view that since Blair has said he is going, the best thing is to get it over and done with," Karen Buck, a Labor member of Parliament who is close to Blair, said in an interview.

"He has been without doubt the most successful leader Labor has ever had in terms of winning elections," she said, citing gains in the economy, health services and education. But Blair's support of the Iraq war and his reluctance to call for an immediate cease-fire during the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon, which many people here saw as another siding with Washington, "have been a major factor in undermining party support for him," she said.

While most West European leaders opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Blair argued passionately that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and was an imminent threat. When those claims were discredited, Blair's popularity here suffered severely. In a YouGov poll in July, only 27 percent of respondents said they were satisfied with Blair's job performance.

Despite the political cost, Blair has remained an unwavering spokesman for the Iraq war and has committed thousands of British troops to Afghanistan as well. "The Iraqi and Afghan fight for democracy is our fight," he told an audience in Los Angeles last month. "Same values. Same enemy. Victory for them is victory for us all."

The next general election must be held by 2010 at the latest. When Blair steps aside, Labor members will vote for a new leader. If Brown is selected, as is expected, he will automatically become prime minister as the head of the largest party in Parliament. Although he has effectively been the second-ranking official in the country for more than nine years, Brown's supporters want him to have enough time to prove his command of the top job before facing David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, in the general election.

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."