The Longer Goodbye

Today Tony Blair, while still refusing to give a precise date when he will stand down as Labour leader and PM, indicated that it will be within 12 months.

Making sense of all the stories about what is going on in the government is difficult, but several things are obvious. The first is that the row over when Tony Blair should step down has not been manufactured by the press. There is no way that eight Labour MPs would resign from government jobs, forfeiting all hope of preferment while Blair remains PM, unless there was a real power struggle going on.

The second is that, just as internal infighting damaged the last government and contributed to the election of the present one, it is difficult to see how the sight of Labour MPs stabbing each other in the back can do other than further damage the reputation of the government and very possibly of politics generally. You might expect that politicians of all parties would have learnt this lesson but it appears not. Perhaps this is further evidence that Labour has been in power for too long.

The danger is that while government ministers concentrate on fighting each other, or on daft ideas for a “farewell tour” for Blair, the action which they should be taking instead to deal with real problems facing Britain will be ignored. Instead we get government by gimmick and the longest party leadership campaign in history.

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