After the events of the past few days I have started to think differently. A few weeks ago, if asked, I would have said ‘Yes, Blair needs to go as soon as possible and Gordon should take over the party!’
Reading the press and seeing the events of the last few days unfold has been interesting to say the least. I find myself asking who is engineering what, who hopes to achieve what, who will ultimately lose out, and what is going to happen.
Saturday’s Guardian tells me that half the country want Blair out, so Blair needs to resign. That’s an understandable, but interesting and not necessarily accurate, interpretation to put on that particular statistic. 50% wanting Blair to go has the obvious unspoken statistic attached. The other 50% either are not interested, not bothered, or want Blair to stay! In light of some or all of this, Blair is quite right to stay in office for the moment, as half the people dis-satisfied is, actually, not a majority against him.
I have been disappointed this week by the actions of some. My confidence in Brown as a successor has been wiped out! He has time to change that, but I look forward to casting my vote in the leadership election of the party that takes pride in ‘one member, one vote’.
I hope that over the next few weeks we will see a different display; a display of integrity, strong leadership and people uniting behind what they stand for and believe, rather than being self-protective and worrying about how others might perceive them.
Just strikes me – I’m mot sure whether than hope is expressed towards the party or to the church, or both!
The Shiny Headed Prophet 
A comment below that higlights the problems we all have with Tony Blai (originally from Ian Dale’s blog http://www.iaindale.blogspot.com which has a right wing bias but is pretty good)The Strange Priorities of Tony Blair I’m told by a source in the armed forces that there is incredulity in Iraq amongst our soldiers that the Prime Minister has found time to meet the families of the captured Israeli soldiers.Every sympathy goes to them as fellow soldiers but this is the PM who has never attended a UK military funeral, visited an injured soldier in hospital (and there are many more than the Govt will admit too) and has never met with the families of UK soldiers either killed or injured in Iraq or Afghanistan. Smashing bloke eh?He will meet other country’s families when it is safe for him but won’t meet/look in the face the British families that are grieving. This is not a judgement on the rights/wrongs of the war but if you commit troops to action you must be able to face their families.