Skipper

This is rather a unflattering image of our Prime Minister, but it does seem to describe his attitude towards the rest of us, especially members of the party which put him where he is. Like so many Labour party members I'm aware of my schizoid attitude to Tony Blair. He it was who cast out the awful discredited Conservatives after a painful 18 years in the wilderness. He it was who offered so much in those early years: different style, different policies, a species of hope we perhaps had never known. The disillusion has been desperately painful. I felt he should have resigned once Iraq went pear-shaped early on and certainly once Hutton and Butler revealed Number 10's fingerprints on dossiers which had clearly been 'sexed up'. But he stayed and tried to draw the sting of his critics by saying he'd not contest in 2009. Whilst he ought to have gone then, I came to realise that he wouldn't go until the very last minute. And it seems this is still the case; indeed with knobs on as the picture suggests.

But he must now know that the game is up and that continuation in power is blighting the prospects of his successor, whoever that person may be. Jackie Ashley reflects on the situation today and you can feel something of her despair, shared as it is by the majority of party members. The Compass poll of party members taken for last Saturday's conference revealed that 71 per cent wanted him to go before September 2007 with over a third wanting him to go within the next three months. Why? Over half identified the Iraq invasion as the biggest mistake made by the government. But so far Blair ignores negative feedback totally; as Michael Meacher commented at the conference: 'Even when the Government does consult, it gives no indication whatsoever that it listens to what is said or modifies its policies.'

Jackie Ashley thinks that since the demise of Prezza, there are few people now available to knock on Tony's door with the proverbial revolver and bottle of whisky, though Neil Kinnock gets a possible mention. More persuasive might be those MPs with slim majorities who are now agonising over their chances; or maybe those young ministers who are blanching at the far from impossible idea- mooted by the Brownite MP, Michael Wills- that Labour will lose the next election and be out of power for 15 years. For the sake of the party and all the hope it still stands for, he should go as soon as possible.