British Prime Minister Tony Blair to quit within a year

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Blair to quit within a year

By Paul Majendie and David Clarke 20 minutes ago

British Prime Minister Tony Blair is set to say on Thursday he will step down within a year, rejecting growing calls from within his ruling Labor Party for a new leader to revive its fortunes.

His finance minister and expected successor Gordon Brown, eager to heal damaging divisions in Labor Party, said he would support Blair's decision and stressed that it was for the embattled premier to decide when to go.

Brown said this "should not be about private arrangements but what is in the best interest of our party and most of all the best interest of our country and I will support him in doing exactly that."

Blair's popularity has tumbled in opinion polls after government scandals over sleaze and mismanagement were compounded by controversy over the wars in Iraq and Lebanon. Some former supporters urgently want a change at the top.

Blair's spokesman said the prime minister was aware of public concerns and would make a statement on his future later on Thursday to reflect what Environment Minister David Miliband said earlier this week.

"David Miliband articulated what is the common sense position. We are very comfortable with what David Miliband said," the spokesman said. "What he said was that this was likely to be the Prime Minister's last party conference."

Labor holds its annual conference later this month in the northern English city of Manchester and party members are clamoring to know whether it will be his last.

Blair has ruled the country for almost a decade and won three consecutive elections but with support ebbing away, his decline mirrored the dramatic slide in Margaret Thatcher's fortunes at the end of her premiership.

With party colleagues running scared about Blair's growing unpopularity and losing their jobs at the next election, a junior minister and seven government aides quit on Wednesday after calling on him to step down now.

And with the mutiny still at fever pitch it was unclear whether a statement on Thursday from the prime minister with no precise departure dates would be enough for his critics.

"TRAIN CRASH"

Blair's spokesman ruled out an immediate resignation but declined to give a running commentary on departure dates after British media reported that Blair would step down in early May, 2007, saying some of the speculation was "just plain wrong."

Miliband, a loyal Blair ally who has been tipped as a future prime minister, has said Blair would be gone within a year and Labor needed Brown in charge following an orderly handover.

"Either we have a smooth transition or you have a train crash," Miliband told the New Statesman magazine in comments published on Thursday.

Blair has already pledged not to fight the next election, expected to be held in 2009, and senior ministers appeared on morning talk shows to try and quell the speculation.

Conservative leader David Cameron, whose youthful image has sent him into a comfortable opinion poll lead over Blair, said the Labor government was "in meltdown."

Thatcher, one of his most illustrious predecessors, was ruthlessly toppled by a party mutiny when colleagues felt she had become an electoral liability after three election wins.

"In 20 years time or so we'll look back and think what a tragedy," Mori pollster Ben Page told Reuters. "He was amazingly popular, he started out as one of the most popular leaders ever and he's now less popular than Thatcher when she went."