Issue 152

Waterfront Debate: Tony Blair Should Stay

12th February 2007

Prepare yourself for something radical. I don't think Tony Blair should resign. At least not yet.

There don't seem to be many who share this sentiment. Wherever you look across the political spectrum, they are putting pressure on Blair to go. David Cameron has called for the Prime Minister to stand down "in the national interest" while Sir Menzies Campbell suggested that "he should go sooner rather than later" (so that we can all "move on"). There have even been murmurs of discontent among the upper echelons of the Labour Party, including from highly respected former Labour leader Neil Kinnock as well as from Hazel Blears, the Labour Party chairwoman.

In fact, the PM's only supporters are probably the ultra-loyal Blairites, and despite my own call for him to stay, I am certainly not one of those. Having grown up during the Blair era, he was naturally the target for my teenage antiestablishment angst. After maturing politically, intellectually and facialhairily, I came to see why Blairism was important and possibly necessary. This lasted about five minutes before he stuffed it all up with the war in Iraq.

By this point, I along with many others, had become disillusioned with the Tony Blair experience, and felt it was time for him to hang up his everyday-chap mug (both the one contains his tea and the one situated on the front of his head). Sure enough, last year Blair stated that 2007 would be his last in Downing Street, and it looks increasingly likely that, if he is allowed to do so, he will depart around June.

The explicit nature of this promise is the reason why I believe he should stay until that time. If charges are made against a senior figure, Blair may well have to go anyway, but as things stand there have only been arrests and interviews as witnesses. The fact that the police have interviewed the Prime Minister is no reason for him to step down - the police simply would not be doing their job if they did not ask him a few questions.

In fact, if Cameron and Sir Menzies' calls for him to go were to succeed, it would actually damage them more in the long-term than it would benefit them in the immediate future. They might well relish in the inevitable big headlines, but eventually they will find that they have ceded too much ground to the media. The press plays a vital role in uncovering the truth and disseminating it among the masses, but it must never come above the realm of political process. If it does, we risk politics becoming more like a soap-opera than it is already.

The public are cynical enough already, and partyloyalty is increasingly dying out as old foot-soldiers for both parties die out. If Blair's dismissal stems from scandal, it is naïve of Cameron and Campbell to think that would damage the Labour Party alone. The shockwaves will injure politics and ultimately the nation at large will suffer.

Daniel Budden