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Blair 'is a fighter'
05/05/2006 18:19 - (SA)
London - Swinging the axe in a major cabinet reshuffle, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has signalled his determination to hold onto power despite a bruising voter backlash in the polls.
It was Labour's biggest election loss since Blair took power nine years ago.
Political analysts said the thrashing of Blair's Labour Party in Thursday's council elections in England gave the embattled prime minister the opportunity for what could be the last big shake-up of his inner circle before he steps down.
The election results will increase the pressure on Blair, both within the party and from the media, to announce his departure date now and hand over to his presumed successor, finance minister Gordon Brown.
But Blair is a fighter, say commentators, who is reluctant to relinquish a nine-year grip on power.
He is also a clever enough politician to know exactly when and how he will eventually relinquish this power, says analyst Tony Travers of the London School of Economics.
He intends to carry on
"The reshuffle is a powerful symbol that Blair intends to carry on," said Travers. "He is a tough politician. He has greater powers of survival than some of his opponents in the Labour Party think."
Travers said Blair underlined his determination to carry on - despite a promise to stand down at the end of his third term in office in 2009 or 2010 - by firing or demoting scandal-hit ministers on Friday.
British home secretary Charles Clarke, a target of fury over the non-deportation of foreign convicts, was the most important casualty of the reshuffle.
Blair also replaced his defence and foreign ministers, and stripped British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott - who admitted an affair with a secretary - of many of his responsibilities.
Although the election results were bad for Labour, said analysts, they did not amount to a "meltdown" and Blair retained room for manoeuvre, said analysts.
John Rentoul, a political columnist with British newspaper The Independent, said the shake-up amounted to a "significant reassertion of prime ministerial authority".
He dismissed much of the anti-Blair feelings expressed in opinion polls - and to some extent in the local election results - as normal for a democracy, particularly for a leader who has served so long in power.
According to a BBC survey, half of Britain's voters want Blair to quit by the end of the year. Voters increasingly see Blair as arrogant, untrustworthy and wrong to support the Iraq war, found the survey.
The calls for Blair to step down might actually reinforce his desire to hang on, said Rentou.
Rentoul said: "He's stubborn.The only way he's going to go is if he decides to go. Like most politicians in power, he's pretty keen to hang on to it."
John Curtice, a political scientist at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, said the election results were just another chapter in the three-year trend of Labour's growing unpopularity.
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