[A-List] UK state: the Blair succession

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

If anyone should still harbour delusions about the socialist Gordon Brown,
not only does he attract praise from Rupert Murdoch, but also from no less
scum than Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail.

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Pressure grows for Blair to go

Brown supporters turn up heat as PM urged to change tack on Iraq

Michael White, political editor
Thursday May 13, 2004
The Guardian

Gordon Brown has seen the influential media tycoon Rupert Murdoch twice this
week amid fears among allies of Tony Blair that the chancellor is growing
more restless in his ambition to succeed the beleaguered prime minister.

Mr Brown had what are described as a routine private meeting with Mr Murdoch
at No 11 on Monday and gave an avowedly Eurosceptic speech to a City dinner
on Tuesday at which the tycoon was a guest of honour, sources close to No 10
said yesterday.

Mr Blair has not seen Mr Murdoch lately, though he did see his emissary,
Irwin Stelzer, shortly before deciding to promise a referendum on the EU
constitution.
As he sets out today on a regional tour to trumpet record employment
levels - "one job created every two minutes since 1997" - the prime minister
remains confident that his 20-year partnership with Mr Brown is still solid
as Labour heads into a general election campaign.

But government business managers at Westminster confirm that some Brown
supporters have become more vocal over recent months, telling fellow
backbenchers that the time is near when a damaged premier should step aside.

"It's causing a backlash. People are going to Gordon and saying 'if you harm
Tony we won't support you'," one senior party figure said last night. "It's
got worse since last year."

With few MPs, if any, suggesting Mr Brown is organising supporters, some of
the Blairite jitters are attributed to the prime minister's unwill-ingness
to accept that he appears to be in worse political trouble than at any time
since 1997, chiefly over Iraq.

Loyal allies want him to admit as much and some ministers are privately
urging him to put distance between London and Washington over the conduct of
the war. Mr Blair tells them he will quit if he decides he is a liability to
Labour.

But Westminster gossip that the chancellor is courting Mr Murdoch with what
one Blair ally called the "American business model" speech, in contrast to
the EU's failure to modernise, has created alarm.

Others say Mr Brown was alarmed when the Murdoch-owned Sun aped Michael
Howard's jibe "Vote for Blair and Get Brown" and presented him as a
high-spending taxer.

By parading his wariness to wards the euro and the European Central Bank -
and reportedly praising the entrepreneurial dynamism of the US - Mr Brown
may simply have been protecting his flank.

Yet it is also reported that Mr Brown lunched last week with Paul Dacre,
editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail stable, who has never converted to the New
Labour cause.

The pair are said to meet regularly. Both fiercely puritanical as well as
relentlessly hard-working, the Thatcherite Mr Dacre and the socialist Mr
Brown are unlikely soulmates. But the Rothermere editor acknowledged in a
rare public appearance before a Commons select committee this month that "I
suspect he (Mr Brown) might have the mantle of greatness upon him".

At Westminster the shambles over allegations of prisoner abuse by British
troops in Iraq has shocked Labour loyalists, some of whom are wondering if
Tory jibes about "loss of grip" are becoming true. Some MPs talk about the
"Geoffrey Howe moment" when a once-loyal ally, someone like John Prescott,
tells Mr Blair his duty is to go.

In practice Mr Brown and Mr Blair work closely on key issues, this week on
Labour's plans to promote the skills and education agenda - trying to drag
the political debate away from Iraq towards domestic services - and on a
compensation package for 60,000 sacked workers who have lost their
occupational pensions.

Both men joined other ministers on the airwaves in trumpeting this month's
employment figures - 1.95 million jobs created since 1997.

Mr Blair will highlight the "second chance" programme for youngsters who
fail GCSE in the West Midlands today and the sharp fall in failing schools
in the north-west tomorrow.