Tony Blair will be replaced as British Prime Minister by the end of July 2007, newspapers reported on Wednesday, signalling the start of a leadership battle that some fear may paralyse government for months.
Finance Minister Gordon Brown is widely expected to succeed Blair as leader of the Labour Party and the country, and several leading political figures said it is vital the two men map out a joint leadership plan.
But others insist there must be a full, open leadership contest that would pit Brown against potential contenders such as Home Secretary John Reid, Education Secretary Alan Johnson, or Environment Secretary David Miliband.
Two senior ministers and Blair allies have said this week they expect the prime minister to be gone within a year.
Newspapers splashed summer 2007 departure dates across their front pages, saying Blair had caved in to increasing pressure from Labour parliamentarians who had demanded a clear timetable.
The Sun tabloid said Blair would step down as Labour leader on May 31 — less than a month after his tenth anniversary in office — and would resign as prime minister eight weeks later after an election to choose a party leader.
The Daily Telegraph hailed the start of ”the long goodbye”.
Blair’s Downing Street office described the reports as ”speculation”, but did not deny them.
”The real issue now is not so much the date but the process of handover, the transition,” David Blunkett, a former home secretary and key Blair ally told BBC television.
”That means both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown as international statesmen … [should] work together,” he said.
Decade in office
Blair (53), winner of a record three consecutive elections for Labour, has seen his popularity dive after a series of government scandals over sleaze and mismanagement, as well as controversy over wars in Iraq and Lebanon.
Opinion polls put Labour well behind the opposition Conservatives, who have been revived by their new, youthful, pro-environment leader, David Cameron.
Blair won his first term on May 1 1997. A decade in power would leave him more than a year short of Margaret Thatcher’s record as the longest-serving prime minister in more than a century.
Pressure piled on him on Tuesday to name a departure date after a number of once-loyal Labour members of Parliament signed a letter calling on him to step down.
Media reports said the letter’s signatories believe up to 100 Labour parliamentarians could use Labour’s annual conference this month to demand Blair publicly confirm his exit date.
The Guardian newspaper, seen as the established voice of the centre-left, also urged Blair to make a departure date official.
”Blair cannot long continue as prime minister without saying something much more explicit and much more politically realistic and modest about his plans,” it said in an editorial.
”There is a real danger that the whole mechanism of government is being paralysed,” said Vincent Cable, spokesperson for economic affairs at Britain’s Liberal Democrat Party.
”If you have a prime minister whose position is under a great deal of uncertainty [and] the possibility of a protracted leadership campaign, the country is rudderless and leaderless.” — Reuters