Blair to stay ‘a year and a bit’
Tony Blair is due to step down in a “year and a bit”, according to Alistair Campbell.
The prime minister’s former chief press officer apparently made the comment to Conservative MP and journalist Boris Johnson when they bumped into each other at Lord’s cricket ground on Monday.
The exchange is reported in the latest edition of the Spectator, the magazine that Mr Johnson used to edit until December last year, and suggests Mr Blair is planning to step down as prime minister at next year’s Labour party conference.
The prime minister has been under pressure to announce a date ever since his announcement that he would not fight a fourth general election, but he has refused.
Many analysts believe he is planning to retire in May next year, after the Scottish and Welsh devolved elections and after exactly ten years in Downing Street, while others think he will try to see through reforms of the NHS due to end next autumn.
Pressed on his departure date at the weekend, Mr Blair said he was looking forward to the G8 summit next summer, and until then would carry on with the job.
“I’ve made it clear all the way through, I’ll carry on doing the job. And so I look forward to next year’s G8 of course, but in the end the most important thing is to do the job,” he told BBC One’s The Politics Show.
He has previously said he would not give an exact date for when he would step down as this would “paralyse” the government, although yesterday in the House of Commons, Conservative leader David Cameron implied this had already happened.
The Witney MP said the government’s admission that ID cards would have to be delayed, its scrapping of enforced police mergers and the latest U-turn over home information packs showed ministers were no longer in charge of their agenda.
Referring to the troubles engulfing deputy prime minister John Prescott over his dealings with an American billionaire who gave him a cowboy outfit, Mr Cameron suggested the pair “saddle up and ride into the sunset”.
Last week, left-wing Labour MP John McDonnell announced he would stand against chancellor Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership, but only when Mr Blair stepped down. He insisted he was not a “stalking horse” attempting to depose the prime minister.
