Surprise resignation paradox

Here in New Jersey, we had a rare variant in which the governor (after revealing his homosexual affairs), announced his decision to resign at a date certain several weeks in the future. The date was chosen to be close enough to Election Day that there would be no time for a run-off election, in which a member of the other party could win.

It’s particularly silly in British politics. Those who remember the glorious days of November 1990 may not remember that it was precisely three weeks between Howe’s resignation and Thatcher’s decision not to enter the second leadership ballot. A week is, indeed, a long time in politics; eight months is an eternity.

The Blairites had a point that naming the day essentially disempowers Blair from now until then. All the more reason for him to go now, in the long and happy tradition of PMs resigning as soon as their authority or ability falters.

He doesn’t know, they haven’t called from Washington yet.

Blair has been promising to resign “within a few years” literally since before he was elected prime minister, and frequently since then. He has always broken that promise, and I don’t expect him to keep this one unless he’s forced. Which explains the paradox: like Friedman and his “next six months is critical for Iraq”, he’s hoping that in a year’s time we’ll all be satisfied when he promises to resign “within a year”. It’s worked for him before.

Labour, for your own sake make him go _now_. That goes even for you New Labour types, _especially_ for you New Labour types. Make him go before he discredits your faction as irretrievably as Lieberman has discredited the New Democrats and Bush’s cabinet has the Neocons.

I think derek’s wrong and he will resign within the year this time. This promise was given in order to avert what had started looking like a complete crisis at Conference, and I suspect he’d have been fine with the crisis if he thought he really was staying on. One reading of what he is doing is the reverse of what derek suggests. Brown is certain to be his successor, and old labour will be seen to be back in charge (wrongly, since Brown is NL, but impressions are what matter). Then Labour loses the next election, and old laboour gets the blame, leading to a renewal of New Labour, and more opportunities for people identified with Blair. The risk is that he is simultaneously making it even more difficult difficult for his true believers to survive under Brown.

Another way of seeing it is that he is buying time for a leadership candidate more to his liking to emerge. This is unlikely to happen, but its not impossible that he thinks it might.

But, he has undermined his own authority, regardless. Who on earth advised him to promise to resign before the next election in the first place?

In a “no confidence” vote, all the Labour MPs would vote with the government, so it would continue.

Cranky, the administration is safe, there is no chance that the Labour majority MPs will vote for a process that sends them back to the hustings to risk being ousted by a Conservative candidate in their ward. That would be personal masochism on their part.

If they lose their majority in such an election, then a Conservative prime minister forms the next government, and they will never want that. If they don’t lose their majority, then Blair, as Labour party leader, gets to be prime minister again, so they haven’t achieved a thing. Changing one prime minister for another of the same party has to be an internal party fight, nothing we voters do changes that, just as you don’t get to choose what Republican replaced Tom Delay or would replace Dennis Hastert in Congress.

What you do get to do is vote enough Democrats into Congress to replace the Republican leader with a Democratic one, and then you don’t get to choose the Democrat. You know it’s to be Pelosi in the House and Reid in the Senate, but the party chose those people, not you.

That would be personal masochism on their part.

Or, as the saying goes, turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.

The reason those PPSes and Tom Watson MP resigned their government posts is that they’re on the lower ladders, and see Blair’s continued residence in Number 10 as kicking the ladder away.

In short, the people who want Blair gone the most are those with the least desire for a general election: aspiring low-ranking ministers and MPs in marginal seats.

One of Kinnock’s bigger mistakes was to call for a no-confidence debate after Maggie announced her exit. The result was a foregone conclusion, and she slapped him around like a bad child in Tescos.

Cranky, confidence in ‘the Labour government’ and confidence in ‘the Blair government’ are two different things, at least for the Labour MPs whose vote counts at the moment. Blair’s problem is that (to Labour MPs) he is in the position of the corporation that will be bankrupt soon – there’s no point in doing anything to ingratiate yourself with him, you have to position yourself with his successor. But he won’t have a Labour PM successor unless the Labour MPs keep voting the right way in no confidence votes. Labour MPs want the PM to be from Labour, they just don’t want him to be from Sedgefield.