Is it time for Tony Blair to step down?

[sweetheart]

Poll question: Is it time for Tony Blair to step down?

Right Honourable Mr. Blair,

In the military, a captain of a ship has no excuse when it
accidentally attacks another nation killing thousands. Why do you
feel it is different for you? You have been party to a crime and have
made all the people of the UK party to that crime of mass murder and
the starting of a civil insurrection in iraq.

Worse yet, you have endangered western nations by exacerbating
terrorism in iraq and related nation states that now, given your
criminal acts, we all are more at risk of attack. What gall you have
to continue to stand in office. It is time for you to act responsibly
and step down as leader.

There are no excuses. You have made us all unsafe and party to mass
murder. As well, you have undermined labour causes by sideing with
criminals who have marginalized democracy in America. If you step
down now, you can still save your skin by confessing to siding with
the wrong criminals. You are not preserving the atlantic alliance,
rather you are ensuring the now-realistic possibility that we in
both britain and america face the reality of attack with WMD's because
of your criminal acts.

What sort of planet do you live on, where you run the ship but are
not responsible for it? Step down now, and give bush a bow-shot of
the future of what western nations do to war makers and those who
choose mass murder over civil enterprise.

Sincerly yours,

reality

[amber dog democrat]

1. Just striking up an alliegance with the Chimp is sufficient

grounds to demand his resignation. One is known by the company one keeps.

[autorank]

2. Step down from Prime Minister in London

and into the World Court in the Hague (before it is submerged by global warming!). A few years in a Dutch jail and a good spanking or two would do the job.

[non sociopath skin]

3. I agree with everything you say, Sweetheart, but ...

... what chance is there of him being replaced by someone who feels differently?

The Skin

[sweetheart]

5. Mr Brown, indeed

When the captain of a ship crashes in to an iceburg, and the crew
manages to limp back to port, nobody worries about who will be next
when they ask the captain to fall on his sword.

I feel similarly. Frankly, i kinda like Mr. Blair next to the
alternatives. Mr. Brown has been a staunch supporter of drugs war
criminalization, and i've little respect for that.

That said, the longer Blair waits to step down, the more toxic the
crown will be that he hands over. It would be better for labour,
for western liberalism and for the people of britain, if a discredited
prime minister stepped down NOW.

I'll worry about Mr. Brown when he takes power. At least there is
the possibility that he might be different than i preconceive.
He damn well better be an improvement, as god willing, he's preferable
to a tory joker.

[non sociopath skin]

9. Whether or not the situation will deteriorate...

... as long as Blair is there, I can't see what is to be gained by replacing him with someone who is as as least as guilty as the PM of all the charges you've levelled at him.

There is no-one in the Labour Party who has a snowball's chance in Hell of replacing Blair who isn't similarily tainted by the Iraq war.

The Skin

[T_i_B]

4. Blair dead in the water? No such luck

I voted yes but I admit that the chances are decidedly slim. Here's an article that explains why.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/04/29/do2902.xml

Blair will not go this summer, and no, he will not go before the next general election. Here are at least three reasons. The first is that it is not in the nature of politicians to surrender their own political lives; they are like wasps in jam jars. They buzz on long after hope has gone. They go on because it is in their nature to do so, because all political careers must end in tears, and it is profoundly in the public interest that they should do, in the sense that politicians will work hardest and best if they know that their only exit is to be terminated in the Darwinian struggle for popular affection and interest.

He will not go because there are scores of his backbenchers who know that they were not propelled to Westminster because their electorates fell in love with their own blue eyes. They know that Tony won their seats, because he offered Middle England a kind of Tory Lite party that seemed economically sensible without some of the nastiness that they had come to associate with my great party.

They also know that they have absolutely no practical way of disposing of Blair, because a leadership election would necessitate the votes of 80 MPs, a quarter of the parliamentary party, and there are not enough of them with the guts to trigger it.

And the third reason why Blair will stay and fight is of course that there is no one to take his place. He is New Labour, for better or worse. Straw? Pshaw. Blunkett? Junk it. As for Gordon Brown, and the idea that the baton could be smoothly passed to the Chancellor - cheated of his birthright for a mess of seared tuna at Granita - it is fanciful. Even if it were possible, technically, to effect such a transition, it would be an insult to democracy, not least because Brown, like so many other Labour members, sits for a Scottish seat, and is currently passing laws for England when English MPs have no say over those questions in Scotland, and above all when he, Gordon, has no say over those questions in Scotland. I would go so far as to say that the West Lothian question is now so acute that no sitting Scottish MP has a hope of becoming prime minister.

[sweetheart]

6. that West Lothian question

That is very interesting that no scottish MP may become prime minister of the UK. It that common knowledge? Do you believe
that?

[T_i_B]

7. Whilst I don't concur with that part of the article

I have pestered you with that very paragraph quite recently! (post #15)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=191x1

Bear in mid that whilst the article is a very good assessment indeed of why Blair is not likely to go it is written by Boris Johnson.

[LeftishBrit]

8. The question is who would replace him?

I don't know if Brown would be much better; and Howard would almost certainly be much WORSE!

[truthspeaker]

12. An MP who voted against the Iraq war

Since all the anti-war MPs have turned out to be 100% correct.

[non sociopath skin]

10. But Sweetheart, Boris WOULD say that, wouldn't he ?.

One of the few bargaining chips that the Tories feel they have right now is their claim that Blair is "breaking up the United Kingdom."

No matter that Regionalism seems to work quite nicely even in a previously notoriously centralised state like France or that the British establishment helped to invent the German federal system: the Tories bang on continuously about sovereignty aka running everything from Greater London.

And no matter that, as a fully paid-up member of the Control Freak Tendency, Blair has had to be dragged kicking and screaming into anything vaguely smacking of decentralisation. The Tories see a rallying cry here, particularly for their South East England heartlands, and they'll plug it mercilessly.

Nothing to stop us from having a Scot as PM. Or President.:)

The Skin

[truthspeaker]

11. No, that time was over a year ago

The Labour party should have canned his sorry ass (or arse as you say in your country) as soon as he joined the US in the Iraq war.