8.15pm ToryDiary update: The slow death of the Blair premiership
5pm ToryDiary update: The other leadership crisis
Midday ToryDiary updates: Wednesday is A-list day for wannabe Tory MPs and Two Tories warn against slippery slope to euthanasia
BLOGS
Platform: Ben Rogers wants Margaret Beckett to prove us wrong
ToryRadio: Interview with Michael Howard
PRESCOTT NO JOBS
"Labour yesterday promised that John Prescott would be given new responsibilities as deputy prime minister as fallout from Friday's dramatic cabinet reshuffle continued and Tory critics claimed he was being given a £130,000 salary simply to chair a few cabinet committees." - Guardian
"LAST DAYS OF LIMPET BLAIR"
"Smooth and orderly. "We'd like a smooth'n'orderly, please." That's what they all say publicly, Brownies, Blairites, hard left, soft right, the lot. It sounds like something you order from Starbucks as summer starts, and it's about as frothy. In fact Labour is already well into a bitter, Machiavellian, relentless and increasingly disorderly power struggle, which is now likely to get worse, not better." - Jackie Ashley in The Guardian
"Mr Blair has achievements to his name. He is the first leader to have won a third term for Labour. He is a world figure, one of the handful of national premiers to be instantly recognisable in other countries. To hang around now in order to try to tidy up the form of his departure would be petty, demeaning and ultimately futile. Stand not upon the order of your going, Mr Blair." - Telegraph leader
"There was a time when the prime minister believed in something. His
vision of the good society was one which I did not share. But I
accepted that he wanted more than power alone. Now he believes in
nothing except hanging on, in the hope of regaining some of his lost
reputation." - Roy Hattersley in The Guardian
"This reckless reshuffle has thus imperilled the Prime Minister to an
extent that five Conservative leaders and a few overseas dictators
never managed. It steers me, at least, to ponder a personally painful
question: “Has Mr Blair become a menace to Blairism?” - Tim Hames in The Times
BROWN'S MANOEUVRES
"Mr Brown in two TV appearances and a charity walkabout gave the impression of a man on the campaign trail waiting impatiently for the prime minister to call it a day." - Patrick Wintour in The Guardian
"Neither of them is a villain - not Mr Blair for insisting that he has a third-term mandate nor Mr Brown for his anxiety to take over the reins. But Mr Blair has to beware of allowing his premiership to descend into a vanity project, while Mr Brown has to beware of allowing his challenge to be seen as a return to Labour's bad old days." - Guardian leader
"The Government and the Labour Party need a period of calm — the letter writers should put away their pens, the plotters should sheathe their daggers, and a reforming Government should get on with the business of reform." - Times leader
GLOBAL REACTION TO BRITAIN'S LOCAL ELECTIONS...
"The Harold Pinter set still detests Mr. Blair for his alliance with Washington. But unlike the country's chattering classes, who set the media agenda, the British electorate's souring romance with New Labour is driven not by anti-Americanism but fatigue with familiar faces. Labour's penchant for scandal--from peerages for big campaign donors to taxpayer-funded plane trips and haircuts for Cherie Blair--has only reinforced public weariness. The low point came with "triple-whammy Wednesday," in April, when two of Mr. Blair's cabinet secretaries were shown to be badly mismanaging their departments and his deputy prime minister admitted to an affair with one of his secretaries. The Conservatives, under new management by 39-year-old David Cameron, have benefited from Labour's troubles. The Tories won 40% of the vote Thursday, compared with Labour's 26%. For the first time in a decade, Britain no longer looks like a virtual one-party state. The image-conscious Mr. Cameron--who is so far shallow on substance--has three years before the next national election is due to prove that the Tories are back for real."
Iran's reaction is quoted in today's Telegraph (which has a refreshed website):
""The people's vote showed their opposition to Mr Blair's policies of following those of the United States," said the foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi. "The outcome is the result of London blindly following the US policies, including in Iraq."
THE JOFFE BILL
"Soon it will become admirable for old folk, like disgraced Roman generals, to rid the world of themselves by heading off to the state euthanasia service for a tasteful and "dignified" departure. Our approach to animal life is ruthlessly Darwinian. We breed selectively, and cull the old and infirm: we work to improve not the wellbeing of particular individuals but the quality of the stock. But we are different: the value of human life lies not its utility, in the use or happiness it brings to the individual or to society. Human beings are intrinsically valuable, irrespective of their own strengths or attitudes." - Danny Kruger in The Telegraph
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