The man likely to replace British Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday he believes Blair will arrange a dignified and orderly exit from the post.
An opinion poll published yesterday, which pegged the governing Labour Party's support at a 14-year low, found that half the respondents hoped that Blair would resign within a year.
"I think we can prove to the world that we can do these things in a unified and proper way," Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown said in an interview with GMTV.
Blair reaffirmed on Monday that intended to step down before the next national election, and that he would leave his successor sufficient time to settle into the job. He confirmed that Brown was his choice to take over. But he rejected a growing cacophony of calls for him to name the day that he intends to resign.
"To state a timetable would simply paralyze the proper working of government, put at risk the necessary changes we are making for Britain and therefore damage the country. It wouldn't end this distraction but merely take it to a new level," Blair said.
"The public are the boss. If we are not careful and don't get on with the business of governing, we will lose them," he said.
Brown said Blair had not told him of the date on which he intends to leave.
"I think what he is going to do is talk to senior colleagues about it," Brown said.
In the Populus poll published yesterday by the Times, Labour fell to 30 percent support, eight points behind the main opposition Conservatives.
Labour's level of support was down six points from the previous month. The drop apparently reflected the impact of revelations that more than a thousand foreign prisoners had been released without being considered for deportation, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott's admission of an extramarital affair and continued calls from some sections of the Labour Party for Blair to stand down.
Following Labour's third-place finish in local elections last week, Blair shook up the Cabinet. Charles Clarke, who was held responsible for the prisoners debacle, lost his job as home secretary and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was demoted.
In the poll, 72 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that the reshuffle was intended to distract attention from the government's problems, and 54 percent said the government's biggest problem was Blair himself. Half of the respondents wanted Blair to leave within a year, including 28 percent of those who identified themselves as Labour supporters.
The poll was based on telephone interviews with 1,509 adults from Friday to Sunday, and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS