Tony Blair has long had a private ‘timetable’ for his departure.
Tony Blair has long had a private ‘timetable’ for his departure. The trouble is that it is much more complicated, conditional and flexible than his enemies would wish. It is not a single linear timeline, but a series of intertwined chronologies that he hopes will converge towards an agreeable exit date. What he refuses to do is to set that date arbitrarily to satisfy the bailiffs of the Labour party who lurk moodily outside No. 10.
Here is an example of the problem: the Prime Minister has long been planning to make a keynote speech in America on geopolitical issues, to continue his valedictory series of ex cathedra pronouncements on international affairs that began in Oxford in February.
Part of Mr Blair’s purpose on this occasion is to persuade the world that President Bush’s true position on the environment, global terrorism and the need for multilateral action has been misunderstood.
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