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Sex, crime rocks Blair cabinet
27/04/2006 16:20 - (SA)
London - British Prime Minister Tony Blair faced fresh calls to resign on Thursday, as three of his senior cabinet ministers floundered in political and personal crises.
British newspapers gave a damning verdict on the governing Labour Party's woes - which climaxed in a sex scandal starring the deputy prime minister, a crime blunder by the interior minister, and a snub by nurses for the health minister.
"A government in meltdown," said the right-wing Daily Mail in an editorial.
"Labour Clowns," echoed The Sun tabloid.
The Daily Telegraph went a step further: "Blair must pay the price for his misgovernment."
A week before local elections in England, Blair's Labour Party - once the image of hope and change following years of sleaze under the Conservatives - appears to have lost its sparkle.
The latest blow came on Wednesday, when British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, 67, confirmed tabloid revelations that he had cheated on his wife.
Photos plague Blair administration
Prescott admitted to a two-year affair with a civil servant 24 years his junior.
The shock admission, coupled with pages of revealing newspaper photographs, added to the problems plaguing Blair's administration.
Twenty-four hours early, the British home office revealed it had failed to consider whether more than 1 000 foreign convicts should be deported at the end of their sentences.
Instead the criminals - who included murderers, rapists and child molesters - were set free in Britain.
British home secretary Charles Clarke apologised for the blunder and offered to resign twice.
Blair refused to accept his resignation. He wants the minister to stay on and sort the mess out.
British health secretary Patricia Hewitt also found herself in hot water this week.
She was repeatedly booed and slow-handclapped in a televised address to the Royal College of Nursing because of anger over the government's health reforms.
'Blair's worst days as PM'
The heckling forced Hewitt, repeatedly mocked this week for claiming the national health service has enjoyed its "best year ever", to cut short her speech.
Such public humiliation for three close Blair allies inspired columns of criticism in the British press.
An editorial in The Times said: "It is possible that Tony Blair has had worse days as prime minister. It is not immediately evident when they might have been.
"It has left the collective impression of a government that is out of touch in the first case, astonishingly incompetent in the second and morally unhinged in the third," the newspaper wrote.
The Daily Mail, a frequent critic of the government, devoted at least 14 pages to the furore.
- AFP
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