Guardian: The day Blair accused his chancellor of blackmail

[Greeby]

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labourleadership/story/0,,1866401,00.html

An all-out power struggle between the chancellor and the prime minister, culminating with allegations of blackmail by Tony Blair and a ferocious shouting match between the two men, appeared last night to have forced Mr Blair to publicly declare as early as today that he will not be prime minister this time next year.

That may not be enough for Gordon Brown, who is understood to have demanded that Mr Blair quit by Christmas, with an effective joint premiership until a new leader is anointed by the party.

Mr Blair's statement - possibly to be made when he attends a north London school with education secretary Alan Johnson today - will effectively confirm what cabinet ministers, including David Miliband, have been hinting about his intentions in the past few days. It represents a further shift in position as the prime minister struggles to cling to office and prevent a meltdown in the party.

But last night Mr Brown found himself under pressure to repudiate the move by some MPs to force Mr Blair from office now. The Treasury hinted last night that it could accept a deal in which Mr Blair stood down by the beginning of May, so long as the prime minister made a public declaration of this intention within the coming months.-snip-


I was too young to understand it all back in 1990, glad I'm around for this time :popcorn:

[Greeby]

1. And here's the Independent cover, hot off the presses

[Taxloss]

2. Yup, this looks like "it"!

There's no wiggle room left - conference could be a disaster!

[RufusEarl]

3. Never understood why he got in cahoots with Bu$h,

Does anyone know what the blackmail threat was? The article never said, only that a blackmail threat was made.

unstable democracies all around the globe, this can't be good for the little guy in england.

[RB TexLa]

4. The Tory beat down of Thatcher was much more vicious

Most of the Labour leaders still like Blair personally, same can't be said for the Conservative leaders and Thatcher in '90.

Of course this one isn't over yet.

[Bryan]

5. Finally!

If any of this is true, it's welcome news, even if it's been in the offing for a long time (eerie timing, too; wasn't it just a month or so ago that Time Trumpet ran that hilarious fake clip of Brown and Blair in a fistfight?).

[tocqueville]

6. Steve Bell on Thatcher and Blair's legacies

notice who is the elephant...

[Rockstone]

8. I'd love to understand that cartoon

who are the beans?
Is that blair or thatcher on the elephant?
the elephant is Bush right?
what do the farts have to do with it?
what does "vegetables" mean besides the literal meaning?

[Taxloss]

10. I'll try to explain ...

The beans are Labour MPs - they're considered samey, supine and clone-like, and Blair has shown them as beans before.

It's Blair on the elephant, wearing Thatcher's clothes and looking like Thatcher. He's a Thatcher-a-like, you see ...

The elephant is indeed Bush.

"Farts" in this context mean "inneffective puffs of hot air" from the "beans" (Labour MPs)

"Vegetables" = "brain-dead". There's a famous joke about Thatcher referring to her Cabinet as "vegetables".


The overall message is that even the normally pliant parliamentary Labour party is now rumbling with discontent.

[Greeby]

13. The famous Vegetables sketch turned up on Youtube yesterday

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33YUALnF3JY

[Synnical]

7. Okay, forgive my ignorance

How do elections work in the UK? Blair was elected, but he's being forced to step down?

[Taxloss]

11. Blair wasn't elected - Labour was elected with him as leader.

Labour is the government because it holds a parliamentary majority, and Labour can oust Blair as its leader and prime minister.

We can change PM without the people having any say in the matter. Isn't democracy grand!

[Synnical]

16. Thanks so much

I have a little bit of more understanding. :)

[RB TexLa]

12. Parliamentarian system, Blair was elected as the MP from Sedgefield

Think Speaker of the House with no separate executive branch.

[RB TexLa]

9. And of course much like the 90's a "new look" opposition is waiting

The new face of the Conservatives




David Cameron has called on Britain and India to lock into a new special relationship, opening up their economies to increased trade, and working more closely to combat international terrorism and protect the world environment.
...
He added: "The second great challenge that our two countries face together is the challenge of protecting the environment. Here in India, climate change is already having dramatic effects."

http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.story.page&obj_id=131815

[yurbud]

14. this is the stuff that makes me like parliamentary system more and more

too bad we can't have no confidence votes and commons question time and all that here.

[Greeby]

15. Don't get too envious of PMQs

Most of the Labour MPs use it as a chance to do for Tony what Monica did for Bill, while the Tories prattle on about the typical Daily Mail faux-outrage issues. The job of asking decent, insightful questions about our foreign policy is left to Menzies Campbell, and even he's backed away from that lately. And don't get me started on Galloway, he's permanently AWOL from Parliament

[yurbud]

17. whatever its imperfections, it's better than what we get--nothing

No serious questions directly to the president from the press OR opposition.


He might as well be the queen (though I think he privately is).

[yodermon]

18. Blackmail? Here's your blackmail: Operation Ore

http://www.counterpunch.org/james01292003.html

A child-sex scandal that threatened to destroy Tony Blair's government last week has been mysteriously squashed and wiped off the front pages of British newspapers. Operation Ore, the United Kingdom's most thorough and comprehensive police investigation of crimes against children, seems to have uncovered more than is politically acceptable at the highest reaches of the British elite. In the 19th of January edition of The Sunday Herald, Neil Mackay sensationally reported that senior members of Tony Blair's government were being investigated for paedophilia and the "enjoyment" of child-sex pornography:

"The Sunday Herald has also had confirmed by a very senior source in British intelligence that at least one high-profile former Labour Cabinet minister is among Operation Ore suspects. The Sunday Herald has been given the politician's name but, for legal reasons, can not identify the person.

There are still unconfirmed rumours that another senior Labour politician is among the suspects. The intelligence officer said that a 'rolling' Cabinet committee had been set up to work out how to deal with the potentially ruinous fall-out for both Tony Blair and the government if arrests occur."

...
The Blair government has responded by imposing a comprehensive blackout on the story, effectively removing it from the domain of public discussion. Attempts on the part of this journalist to establish why the British media has not followed up on the revelations have met with a wall of silence. Editors and journalists of The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, The Sunday Times, The Observer, The Sunday Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Daily Express, The Mirror, The Sun, the BBC, Independent Television News and even The Sunday Herald have refused to discuss the matter.

This article cites http://www.sundayherald.com/30813 as a source, but WHOOPS! page not found.
The 19 January 2003 Sunday Herald article can be found here, but the quotes cited in the article have changed. Go fucking figure.