Out, Out Damned Blair

...For now that seems unlikely...

...Neither Brown nor Cameron has any desire to reorient U.K...

...Brown denies making threats, but says he did have "questions" about the prime minister's future...

...Despite the famous namesake, Watson is not a golfer but that weekend he was staying, as luck would have it, at the St...

...Though he has long emphasized his pro-American credentials, the Blair people worry that his now deepening dependence on the Labour left and the unpopularity of the Labour government may propel him to take a more openly critical stance towards America...

...The pressure intensified this summer when Blair, almost alone among European politicians, lined up with President Bush and refused to call for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in the war in southern Lebanon...

...Mrs...

...As long as Bush is president, there will be little prospect of a popular pro-American policy in Britain...

...In a politically clever speech last week, timed, somewhat dubiously, to mark the September 11 anniversary, David Cameron, the youthful leader of a newly resurgent Conservative party, attacked the Blair government's proximity to Bush over the last five years...

...We shall probably never know if Watson's treachery was a direct result of the impromptu Brown baby shower, but the result was explosive...

...We should be solid but not slavish in our friendship with America," he told a pro-American think tank...

...He orchestrated a plot...

...For the last week, the political conversation has been thick with lines from Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet...

...British politicians and the reporters who cover them have spent far too much of their childhood reading Shakespeare...

...But, if Tony Blair's friends are to be believed, what was served up over the infant's crib that gray afternoon was not coffee and congratulations but a conspiracy that resulted in a coup against the sitting British prime minister that curtailed his term in office...

...Brown had just given birth to the couple's second child, a son, and the proud father was at the family home near Edinburgh...

...Brown has strong links with centrist Democrats and economic and foreign policymakers from the Clinton administration...

...But both sides hope that after 2009, being a close ally of the United states will not have such toxic effects...

...But from the right, too, Labour may find itself tempted toward a less pro-American position...

...Andrews golf resort...

...When he gave an interview to the Times on September 1 insisting he would not set a date for his departure, they moved...

...Blair's friends say Brown threatened wave after wave of ministerial resignations if Blair did not give a firm, early date for his departure...

...Next week's annual Labour party conference, expected to be bloody, may accelerate the transition...

...The two met again later that day...

...Instead of getting on with what one imagines British defense ministers are supposed to do—ensuring that the beleaguered British troops in Afghanistan are properly Gerard Baker, U.S...

...When Blair refused to bow to the MPs' demands, Watson and a half dozen others who make up the bottom link in the government food chain resigned...

...But for many in the party this unusual act of self-term-limiting was not enough...

...But he said he was no neocon-servative (what courage...

...The calculation in both camps is a delicate one...

...His support for the U.S.-led war in Iraq had sapped Blair's popularity at home, and many in the party wanted him gone soon and replaced by Brown...

...The next day Watson returned to London...

...Instead, he said, he would serve out most of his term but make way for a successor— who the world assumes will be Brown—well in advance of the next election, due by the summer of 2010 at the latest...

...The prime minister's enemies within the party returned from their summer holiday demanding blood...

...Trouble had been brewing in the Labour ranks for months...

...Which most observers take to mean some time next spring, although it could happen sooner...

...What we know for sure now is that Blair, America's staunchest ally in the war on terror, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel-Lebanon, and elsewhere, will be gone in a matter of months...

...by Gerard Baker There may not have been such a consequential visit involving gifts for a newborn since the Magi came upon that star shining in the east a couple of thousand years ago...

...policy...

...Cameron has announced that John McCain will be speaking to the Conservative party conference in Britain next month, which suggests that even by the usual standards, there will be a lot at stake for British politics and policy in the 2008 presidential election...

...The fear among Blair's dwindling band of allies is that the post-Blair era in Britain will be marked by a decisive turn against U.S...

...policy away from its Atlanticist moorings, but neither has the inclination (or the courage) to follow Tony Blair in asserting firm support for the current U.S...

...To be fair, he also dismissed anti-Americanism as "intellectual and moral surrender...

...administration...

...editor of the Times of London, is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard...

...The following day, Brown, now also back in London, confronted Blair at 10 Downing Street about his plans...

...Brown, despite continuing rumors in London last week of a counter-strike by Blairites in the party's leadership election, remains far and away the probable next prime minister...

...Though the passions on display doubtless recall those human tragedies, the prosaic but more important question is what all this means for the direction of British politics, especially from an American perspective...

...On Monday, September 4, Tom Watson, a hitherto (and if there's any justice, henceforth) anonymous junior defense minister in Tony Blair's government, paid a friendly call on Gordon Brown, the brooding chancellor of the exchequer and impatient heir presumptive to the British prime ministership...

...Watson penned his signature to a letter circulating among some backbench Labour MPs calling on Blair to step down...

...and, perhaps somewhat confusingly for an American audience, described his future foreign policy as being "liberal-conservative...

...We know too that his premature departure was occasioned principally by his support for the United States...

...supplied, for example—he did what comes more naturally to politicians...

...Seized, it seems, with a sudden desire to share in his fellow Scot's paternal celebrations, he took the short trip to the Brown home, carrying with him a present for the baby...

...And the day after that, Thursday, September 7, bowing to the pressure, Blair announced he would be gone within a year...

...Last week, Brown again reiterated his support for the war on terror, and drew attention to his own role—as the nation's finance minister—in financing it...

...Before he was elected to an unprecedented third term as Labour prime minister in May 2005, Blair had promised he would not seek a fourth...

...It was by all accounts a turbulent meeting that ended without resolution...