1 Boring Old Man

Blair says he’ll resign within a year

Prime Minister Tony Blair reluctantly promised Thursday to resign within a year, hoping that revealing a general timeframe for his departure will appease critics who are calling for him to step down.

"I would have preferred to do this in my own way," Blair said. He refused to set a specific departure date, but said the annual Labour Party conference this month would be his last. The next conference is scheduled for September 2007.

"The precise timetable has to be left to me and has to be done in the proper way," he said.

I first saw Tony Blair at Princess Diana’s funeral. He read the "love" thing from Corinthians. I thought he was great, and wished we had one like him. Over the years, he’s stuck with America, and that can’t be an all bad thing, though the America he got straddled with was "Bush’s America." I have the naive notion that Bush brought him down. For all I know, he’s as deluded as Bush. He certainly wasn’t very adroit in the David Kelly affair, rivaling our misbehavior with Valerie Plame. But I still liked him, and see him as another casualty of the Bush Administration. Something I learned living in England for a few years, the British can be surprisingly vicious to politicians who let them down – blaming. We’re much more forgiving. But I think Mr. Blair might have been much more effective if he hadn’t thrown his lot in with President George W. Bush. I wish he could take Bush with him..