PRIME Minister Blair yesterday refused to name the date for his departure.
Speaking yesterday on a visit to one of the new ‘pathfinder trust’ schools in north London, in the wake of Wednesday’s rash of resignations by a junior minister and seven Blairite aides, he indicated that he will be gone by next September but insisted that he will not set the date until later.
Arriving at Quintin Kynaston specialist technology college, Blair was booed by a group of at least sixty of the school’s pupils and anti-war demonstrators who chanted ‘out, out, out’.
The protesters held placards with the words ‘time to go’ and a four-foot model of a dog biscuit which they were offering as a ‘reward’ to ‘Tony the Poodle’ for his obedience to US President Bush.
One 13-year-old girl said: ‘We understand some stupid people in politics are trying to kill the Lebanese and Iraqis and everybody else.’
Another pupil from the school added: ‘We are against that and Tony Blair should go.’
Blair did not comment on the protest, he told journalists in the school playground: ‘The first thing I’d like to do, is to apologise, actually, on behalf of the Labour Party for the past week which, with everything that’s going on, back here and in the world it has not been our finest hour, to be frank.
‘I think what is important now is that we understand that it’s the interests of the country that come first and we move on.
‘Now as for my timing and date of departure, I would have preferred to do this in my own way.
‘But it has been pretty obvious from what a lot of my Cabinet colleagues have said earlier in the week, the next party conference in a couple of weeks will be my last party conference as party leader.
‘The next TUC next week will be my last TUC, probably to the relief of both of us.
‘But I am not going to set a precise date now. I don’t think that’s right.
‘I will do that at a future date and I’ll do it in the interests of the country and depending on the circumstances of the time.’
He insisted that ‘the precise timetable has to be left up to me and it has to be done in the proper way.’
Turning on his opponents, Blair added: ‘I also want to say one other thing after last week.
‘It’s important for the Labour Party to understand, and I think that the majority of the party do understand, that it’s the public that comes first and it’s the country that matters.
‘We can’t treat the public as irrelevant bystanders in a subject as important as who is their prime minister.
‘So we should just bear that in mind in the way we conduct ourselves in the time to come. In the meantime, it’s important we get on with the business.’
Before making his statement to journalists, he introduced Education Secretary Alan Johnson, the Blairite tipped to succeed him, to his audience inside the school.
Blair said: ‘I have brought Alan with me. You have got to have a friend.
‘At least I have got one. Actually people have been saying who’s that with Alan Johnson?’
Meanwhile, Chancellor Brown earlier yesterday took the opportunity to speak publicly for the first time in the past few days.
Using a visit to a sports centre in Scotland, Brown said: ‘We are in the unique situation in our country where the Prime Minister has said, as he has said on a number of occasions, that he does not want to lead our party and our government into the next general election.
‘As a result of that, there are questions about what happens in the time to come, and it’s right to say that I, like others, have had questions myself.
‘I said also to him, and I make it clear again today, that I will support him in the decision he makes, that this cannot and should not be about private arrangements but what is in the best interests of our party, and most of all the best interests of our country, and I will support him in doing exactly that.’