PRIME Minister Blair and former Blair ultra-loyalists spent yesterday slashing away at each others throats.
Blair branded Blairite ex-junior minister, Tom Watson ‘disloyal, discourteous and wrong’ for signing a letter urging him to go.
He spoke out as Khalid Mahmood, a parliamentary secretary to Home Office Minister Tony McNulty, along with five other principal private secretaries resigned from their positions.
The six private secretaries resigned after allies of Chancellor Gordon Brown said that anonymous reports that Blair would resign next May 31 were not good enough.
Emphasising the enormity of his decision, Watson wrote to Blair: ‘Dear Tony, My loyalty to you personally, as well as to the Party and the values we stand for, has been absolute and unswerving. . .
‘My pride in what our government has achieved under your leadership is beyond expression. . .
‘Your leadership has been visionary and remarkable.
‘The party and the nation owes you an incalculable debt. So it is with the greatest sadness that I have to say that I no longer believe that your remaining in office is in the interest of either the party or the country.
‘How and why this situation has arisen no longer matters. I share the view of the overwhelming majority of the party and the country that the only way the Party and the Government can renew itself in office is urgently to renew its leadership. . .
‘As you know, I had a conversation with the Chief Whip last night, in which she asked me to withdraw my support from the 2001 intake’s letter calling on you to stand down, or my position would be untenable as a government minister. I have reflected on this overnight.
‘I cannot withdraw my name, and therefore I accept her judgement. . .’
Blair responded with ‘Dear Tom. . . I am sorry it has come to this.’ Blair told the press: ‘I had been intending to dismiss him but wanted to extend to him the courtesy of speaking to him first.’
The Blairite ship has been wrecked on the rocks of the Iraq, Palestinian and Lebanese wars, and its smashing of the Welfare State policy at home.
The Brownite and Blairite factions are now jockeying for position in a war of succession to Blair.
Brown has been the co-sponsor of all of Blair’s right wing policies but is far too attached to the Labour Party for the Blairites, who want to found a new Liberal party free of all trade unions.
Yesterday, the trade union leaders were passively watching and waiting and refusing to intervene to demand, in the interests of the working class, that Blair resigns at once, and that the party and the government adopts socialist policies.
TGWU leader Tony Woodley said: ‘What we need to look at now is the timetable for the replacement of the Prime Minister or more importantly the policies that any aspiring leader may have.’
He added: ‘What we really require now is to make sure that whoever is going to be the next Prime Minister looks at the really important issues that makes a difference to working men and women.
‘Names in the frame isn’t the important thing at the moment. This is really about our our party here. . . At the moment we have not seen any individual and that includes Gordon Brown that has actually come out and said, “If I were to be the leader of our party here are the sort of policies that I would like to be involved in.” And until we know what new leaders aspire to do in our party, we need to watch and wait, but there is one thing that I do know, we cannot wait another 10 months to know who the leader is.’
So at next week’s TUC Congress, instead of giving a lead, the trade union leaders will be leaving it to Blair and Brown and just ‘watching and waiting’.
Workers must insist that this does not happen. Congress must pass an emergency resolution demanding the resignations of Blair and his partner Brown, and insist on a workers’ government that will repeal all the anti-union laws and racist immigration acts, commence a programme to build millions of council houses, end and reverse the privatisation programme, and withdraw all troops from Iraq, and Afghanistan while recognising Palestine as a state.
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