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Blair 'didn't want' 3rd term
08/07/2007 12:10 - (SA)
London - Tony Blair wanted to resign as British prime minister without fighting a third general election, his former communications director Alastair Campbell told the Sunday Times.
Campbell, whose long-awaited diaries are published Monday, told the newspaper that Blair wanted to announce his decision in mid-2002, nine months before the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
But Campbell said he warned Blair that he would become a "lame duck" prime minister, even if he reasoned it would allow him to make unpopular decisions without worrying that he would be voted out at the ballot box.
"We had been going through a lot of crap," he explained, adding the idea was abandoned because of the pressure of events and the impending military action in the Gulf.
Blair eventually announced in September 2004 that he would not contest a fourth general election as leader of the governing Labour Party but said he would serve a full third term of office.
Many political commentators have said that this "pre-announcement" to resign did make him a "lame duck" after the 2005 general election as the media focused increasingly on when he would step down, as he did not specify a date.
Diaries
In September last year amid heightened disquiet over the war in Iraq, British foreign policy and Labour's future direction, supporters of Blair's finance minister Gordon Brown forced Blair into saying he would be gone within 12 months.
He finally named the date on May 10 and handed over the Labour leadership to Brown on June 24 and the premiership three days later.
Campbell told the Sunday Times that his diaries, which he kept from mid-1994 when Blair became Labour leader to 2003 when he quit as press chief, chart Blair's increasing imperviousness to criticism.
"What you get as the book goes on is Tony caring less about what people say about him," he added.
Blair was well aware of the personal consequences of his stance on Iraq, and accusations that he could be viewed as US President George W Bush's "poodle," he said.
"He was just prepared to live with that," he added.
Campbell's diaries also go into his row with the BBC in 2004 after it reported that the government's dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction - the basis for war - had been exaggerated.
He said he felt "absolutely sick" and wanted to resign on hearing that British government scientist and weapons expert David Kelly - outed as one of the BBC's sources for the story - had gone missing and was later found dead.
The diaries, which are not being serialised, are also said to contain details about how Blair wanted to make princess Diana an ambassador for Britain and that the pair met secretly to discuss plans.
- AFP
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