Jezblog

I used to admire Tony Blair, and rightly so. Then time went on, I had a few grumbles about the tuition fees row, as did a lot of people, but still he had my broad support. Here was a politician with his head screwed on right. Or so I thought. He seems to have lost his head in the past couple of years.

Instead of maintaining and improving Britain's position in Europe, our own political and geographical home, he seems to prefer the swaggering bravado of his friend George in Washington and down on the ranch in Texas.

If you were going to choose people to join in a like-minded coalition, would you hold hands with George Bush and Silvio Berlusconi, who epitomise self-serving arrogance and a lack of true comprehension of what their war policies lead to, or Jacques Chirac and Gerhardt Schroeder? OK, Chirac stole some public funds, but that pales into insignificance next to Bush's theft of the presidency.

Plagiarised dossiers, unfounded claims about WMDs. We've heard all about it at great length. And a great many people are utterly fed up with the lies, the obfuscation and the fact that being British means we are all branded as being pro-war and on the side of the Coalition of the Willing.

Blair doesn't listen to his people (I almost wrote 'subjects' there!), he doesn't listen to his peers in Europe, he doesn't even listen to his own Labour MPs (Robin Cook, Clare Short etc).

He wants to carry on leading us for another five years. Perhaps we should have a vote of no confidence. Blair is becoming easier pickings for an erudite Tory leader. If only the LibDems publicised themselves enough and showed strong leadership, they might put up a serious challenge. Labour could get it so right. But Blair is getting it so very, very wrong. We can see some semi-public manoevrings among the Labour hierarchy. I wish they'd hurry up and mount their coup, so we can get on with doing the right thing instead of following the neoconservative Bush line on everything. And what will a transatlantic alliance with Bush amount to, if (oh please, oh please) John Kerry gets elected in November? Not a lot.

He said he would step down if he ever became an electoral liability to the Labour Party. Well, Tony, we'd like to hold you to that. Gordon Brown could gather a great deal of support. You, Tony, are losing all that support.

It's time for a Big Intervention.