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Call for Blair's resignation

Hasan Suroor

Prime Minister refuses to back Brown for successor

LONDON: A mood of doom and gloom greeted the Labour Party delegates as they assembled in Manchester on Sunday at the start of their five-day annual conference billed as a "make-or-break'' event for the party which, for the first time since it came into power nine years ago, finds itself trailing behind the Conservatives in opinion polls.

The conference opened amid more calls for Prime Minister Tony Blair to quit immediately or announce a firm time-table for his exit amid growing concern that his continuance could irreparably damage the party's electoral prospects ahead of crucial local elections early next year.

In his last speech as party leader on Tuesday, Mr Blair is expected to justify his controversial policies that have alienated large swathes of traditional Labour supporters. He is also expected to take on his critics who see him as the main source of all the troubles facing the party.

Divisions

As divisions over the leadership issue and the party's policies threatened to overshadow the conference, two young Ministers, David Miliband and Douglas Alexander issued an unprecedented public appeal to their senior colleagues urging them to stop feuding.

Mr Blair, who has already declared that he would quit sometime next year, sought to shift the headlines away from the increasingly damaging leadership row saying that the party should focus on people's concerns rather than on issues that, he said, had led the party "to go AWOL [absent without leave]''.

But he ended up fuelling the infighting over leadership by pointedly refusing to back Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the man widely assumed to be his successor.

Asked in a BBC interview whether he still thought Mr Brown would make a "brilliant Prime Minister," Mr Blair said the leadership question "will deal with itself in due course''.

His remarks intensified speculation that the Blair camp was grooming a rival to challenge Mr Brown in a leadership contest.

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