Who else thimks Tony Blair should stand down NOW

[Cam]

Apart from me that is?
(And lots of his MP's and all the people in England who voted against the Labour govt - more than voted for it)

me.

don't think he will though.

and there is a possibility that we get someone worse. Does anyone know the proportion of blairite labour MPs now in parliament?

The Labour party didn't get a mandate in England, the Tories alone got more votes than Labour - its only because of Scotland and Wales (who are devolved anyway) that Labour got in.

I think Tony doesn't have a viable power base in the House

But a similar lack of mandate applied to Thatcher's 3rd term didn't it? (or was it second - history hazy). And when she did stand down we got John Major.

Possibly, senora, I don't remember in that much detail.
I'm not talking for party political reasons, but I believe that Tony Blair must go

Didn't a lot of people vote Labour because they thought he would go and they'd get GB?

(I'm no more a fan of GB than TB BTW)

Me!

I don't think anyone expected him to go instantly though. Thatcher certainly didn't have a mandate.

Oooh, I have just been looking at old elections stats - had completely forgotten the impact of the SDP in the mid 80s elections, before tactical voting was even thought of. SDP and Labour combined still had a smaller percentage of the vote than the Tories but I wonder how many seats were lost to the left by the split vote?

1979: C 43.9%, 339 seats; L 36.9%, 269 seats; Lib 13.8%, 11 seats (turnout 76%)

1983: C 46.0%, 362 seats; L 26.7%, 148 seats; SDP 12%, 3 seats; Lib 14.3%, 10 seats (turnout 72.7%)

1987: C 46.2%, 358 seats; L 29.5%, 155 seats; SDP 10.2%, 3 seats; Lib 13.6%, 7 seats (turnout 75.3%)

1992: C 45.5%, 319 seats; L 33.9%, 195 seats; LD 19.2%, 10 seats (turnout 77.7%)

1997: C 33.7%, 165 seats; L 43.5%, 328 seats; LD 18%, 34 seats (turnout 71.5%)

2001: C 35.2%, 165 seats; L 41.4%, 323 seats; LD 19.4%, 40 seats (turnout 59.1%)

2005: C 32.3%, 197 seats; L 35.2%, 356 seats; LD 22%, 62 seats (turnout 61.3%)

Cam, there have always been more votes against the Govt than for it (since 1979 at least, I didn't look back any further) and the ones who can't be bothered shouldn't be reckoned in.

(from electiondemon )

And TB stated quite clearly in the last couple of weeks that he intended to stay for most of the next Parliament - so nobody who was paying attention would be expecting GB to pop up as PM in a couple of months.

Excellent piece by Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer today: