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Blair regrets blowback from iraq war { May 10 2007 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/world/europe/10cnd-Blair.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/world/europe/10cnd-Blair.html
May 10, 2007
Blair Says He Will Leave Office in June
By ALAN COWELL
LONDON, May 10 — After months of coy hints and fevered speculation, Prime Minister Tony Blair announced today that he would leave office on June 27 after a decade in power in which he sacrificed his popularity to the war in Iraq and struggled at home to improve schools, policing and hospitals.
With stirring oratory cast as a personal testament and blending self-congratulation with a dash of humility, he declared: “I ask you to accept one thing. Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right. I may have been wrong. That’s your call. But believe one thing: I did what I thought was right for our country.”
He spoke in pensive and sometimes emotional tones, acknowledging that his narrative had not all been woven of successes — even offering an unusual apology for his failings. “This is the greatest nation on earth,” he said. “It has been an honor to serve it. I give my thanks to you, the British people, for the times I have succeeded, and my apologies to you for the times I have fallen short.”
The announcement, in Mr. Blair’s home district of Sedgefield in northeastern England, was part of a closely-choreographed and protracted farewell that is not quite over yet. Between now and his final departure, Mr. Blair plans to attend major European Union and international summits in June.
The prime minister’s aides have sought to detail Mr. Blair’s agenda between now and his resignation to counter taunts from the opposition Conservatives that he is leading a lame duck administration. According to British media reports, he has also scheduled trips to France, Africa and the United States and will seek to press laws through parliament before handing over to a successor — almost certainly Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
“Today I announce my decision to stand down from the leadership of the Labor Party. The party will now select a new leader. On the 27th of June I will tender my resignation from the post of Prime Minister to the Queen,” he said.
“I have been Prime Minister of this country for just over 10 years. In this job, in the world today, I think that is long enough for me, but more especially for the country.
“Sometimes the only way you conquer the pull of power is to set it down,” he said.
Mr. Blair stood before 250 cheering supporters in a local Labor Party club-house, his words relayed by banks of television satellite vans drawn up outside. His tone was personal and partly elegiac. His wife, Cherie Booth, the source of much controversy during the Blair era, was in the audience as he spoke and he paid tribute to her. He did not, however, endorse Mr. Brown as his successor.
“It’s difficult in a way to know how to make this speech,” Mr. Blair said. “1997 was a moment for a new beginning. Expectations were high, too high,” he said, referring to the landslide election victory that brought him to power, and praising Labor’s record.
“There is only one Government since 1945 that can say all of the following: more jobs, fewer unemployed, better health and education results, lower crime and economic growth in every quarter. This one.”
He also charted what he considers a fundamental shift in Britain’s prosperity and self-confidence.
“Britain is not a follower today. Britain is a leader,” he proclaimed. “It is a country at home in the 21st century.”
He dwelled at length on a hallmark of his leadership — his readiness to make unpopular decisions out of conviction, as he did in Iraq.
“And, in time, you realize putting the country first doesn’t mean doing the right thing according to conventional wisdom or the prevailing consensus or the latest snapshot of opinion. It means doing what you genuinely believe to be right. Your duty is to act according to your conviction,” he said.
“All of that can get contorted so that people think you act according to some messianic zeal. Doubt, hesitation, reflection, consideration and re-consideration these are all the good companions of proper decision-making. But the ultimate obligation is to decide,” he said.
He spoke, too, of perhaps the most decisive moment of his decade in office — his response to the attacks in the United States of Sept. 11, 2001 and the subsequent actions he took as an ally of the United States that sent his ratings plummeting and embroiled his country in war.
“Then came the utterly unanticipated and dramatic — September 11th 2001 and the death of 3,000 or more on the streets of New York. I decided we should stand shoulder to shoulder with our oldest ally. I did so out of belief,” he said.
“Removing Saddam and his sons from power, as with removing the Taliban, was over with relative ease. But the blowback since, from global terrorism and those elements that support it, has been fierce and unrelenting and costly. For many, it simply isn’t and can’t be worth it,” he declared.
“For me, I think we must see it through. They, the terrorists, who threaten us here and round the world, will never give up if we give up. It is a test of will and of belief. And we can’t fail it,” he said.
Coincidentally, while Mr. Blair was speaking the Bank of England announced a further quarter percent increase in interest rates — a hike designed to curb inflation that has cast a shadow over Labor’s economic record.
In marked contrast to the youthful exuberance with which he led Labor to office in 1997 after 18 years of opposition, Mr. Blair these days is more careworn and far less popular, his party trailing in the polls behind the opposition Conservatives. Only last week, Labor was forced into retreat in regional elections across Britain. Yet, in national elections, Mr. Blair has been one of the most successful and most charismatic campaigners, winning three consecutive victories for the first time in the Labor party’s history.
After announcing last September that he would leave office within a year, Mr. Blair — one of the closest allies of the White house — had refused to be pinned down on a precise date as he strove in vain to erase two big stains on his legacy: British mistrust of his actions in going to war in Iraq, and a lingering scandal over campaign financing.
The timetable announced today gives the Labor Party roughly seven weeks to go through the motions of a leadership contest — Mr. Brown faces no serious challengers — and through a less predictable battle for the deputy leadership to replace John Prescott, who plans to quit along with Mr. Blair.
Mr. Blair traveled to the tiny Trimdon village Labor Club in Sedgefield — the symbolic font of his political power — after talking to his cabinet ministers in London at a brief 15-minute meeting.
According to his spokesman, who spoke in return for anonymity under civil service rules, Mr. Blair did not disclose the date of his planned departure to the cabinet, apparently anxious to forestall a leak and characteristically eager to dominate the stagecraft of the occasion. At the cabinet meeting, Mr. Brown offered Mr. Blair a “fulsome tribute,” the spokesman said.
The choreography reflected a belief among analysts that Mr. Blair does not want his departure to evoke humiliating comparisons to Margaret Thatcher’s ouster by her own party in 1990. When he announced last year that he would step down, he was widely seen as being under overwhelming pressure to quit from supporters of Mr. Brown.
Reinforcing perceptions of his style as presidential, Mr. Blair flew north in an executive jet after driving in a cavalcade of cars and motorcycle escorts to the military airfield at R.A.F. Northolt in west London. His loyalists hailed his announcement in glowing terms.
“Tony Blair has been the most successful leader ever in our 100 year history,” said Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Minister, who has been a strong supporter of Mr. Blair. “Britain is a much fairer, much more tolerant, more democratic place than it was 10 years ago.
“Iraq has been enormously divisive in the cabinet and in the country,” Mr. Hain said, feting Mr. Blair’s record on provoking debate on climate change, and on relieving poverty in Africa. He said this week’s installation of a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland — formally drawing a line under four decades of conflict and animosity — is “an inescapable achievement.”
But he stressed that Mr. Blair had not formally left office despite the hoopla surrounding his announcement on Thursday. “He’s not stepping down yet. It’s a time to tell the cabinet and the country what he’s doing,” Mr. Hain said, speaking after the cabinet meeting.
The opposition Conservatives acknowledged Mr. Blair’s stature as an election winner, but assailed both his record on public services and his credibility. “There has been so much spin in that the word of government is less believed than at any other time,” said William Hague, the Conservative foreign affairs spokesman. “We will be glad to see the back of him.”
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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