The end of the world as Blair knows it

[CHIMO]

Tony Blair will tomorrow do what he has always done when he senses his authority is waning. In a defiant show of strength – that will be presented as routinely ordinary – the Prime Minister’s car, complete with police motorcycle outriders, and a squad of advisers will leave Downing Street, cross Whitehall and make its way through the gates of the Palace of Westminster.

Like a president visiting Congress, Blair will do the British equivalent and talk to his parliamentary party. He need not tell them “this is a very tough and critical moment for the Labour Party”. They already know that. But what Blair doesn’t know is how determined his party is to make it even tougher.

Number 10 and the Labour- governed Commons are supposed to be part of the same team. No longer. On the sofa yesterday as a pundit on BBC’s Football Focus (arranged months ago, Downing Street insisted) the Prime Minister watched and commented on an organisation, Supporters Direct, which tries to help fans have more say within their clubs. Sadly, there’s no such help for ailing PMs. On England’s recent and embarrassing defeat by Northern Ireland, Blair said: “Even great teams have their off-day.” He said nothing about an entire off-term.

In football, the consensus is that managers have to go if they lose control of the dressing room. In politics, as manager of New Labour Dis-united, Blair appears to have lost more recently than just the equivalent of the dressing room – last week he was one vote away from losing the whole House.

http://www.sundayherald.com/52713

They all come a tumbling down.

[EuroObserver]

1. CAn't wait to get rid of the bastard. But keep (restore) the party

I suppose. Electoral law reform (proportional representation) would help.

Heh, The Guardian (Observer) today:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1635453,00.html

<snip>

Blairo bangs it in the back of the net

Euan Ferguson watches the Prime Minister stop the slide and keep his seat... on the BBC sofa

Sunday November 6, 2005
The Observer

It all started badly, as a luminous sofa the colour and quite possibly the texture of Charlie Kennedy's hair did its very best to deposit the Prime Minister in a tangle of limbs on the studio floor.

Yesterday's other Football Focus guests - Mark Lawrenson, who had been referred to as 'Lawro', and John Motson, better known of course as 'Motty' - had been there before, and had managed to secure awkward but safe cross-limbed perches up on the orange lozenge, like climbers on a desperate bivouac.

But Tony Blair (Blairo?) looked decidedly ill at ease as he joined them and tried to gain purchase. A tiny fingerhold, a flaky outcrop for half a crampon would have done, but he was left to slip and slide and try, with increasing desperate twitches, to show that it is, after all, possible to run the country while not falling off a sofa.

All simply the fault, of course, of the BBC's interiors department, but for a while there it was rough going, and it didn't really help when the first question, from presenter Manish Bhasin, was: 'A difficult week for you... how come, Prime Minister, you're here on the sofa with us?'

</snip>

ed: Ridicule is a powerful, and mostly civilised, weapon.