BLAIR
LONDON (AP):
PRIME MINISTER Tony Blair should quit, former Cabinet ministers from his own Labour Party said, blaming Blair for the party's sharply reduced majority in Britain's national election.
Critics, including former Health Secretary Frank Dobson and former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, suggested that Blair's unpopularity, largely over the Iraq war, cost Labour dearly in Thursday's ballot.
"I don't think prime ministers can go on if a very substantial part of their own party thinks that it would be decent of them to resign," Dobson told the ITV channel yesterday.
Blair "was an enormous liability in this general election. If he had not been leader I doubt whether we would have lost a seat. We would probably have gained some," the former minister said.
Dobson was appointed Health Secretary in 1997, but was pressured by Labour leadership to resign the post in 2000.
He is a supporter of Treasury chief Gordon Brown, who is widely regarded as Blair's chief political rival and successor-in-waiting.
Blair won a third consecutive term in the election - something no other Labour leader has achieved. But voter disillusionment after eight years of Labour government and lingering anger over the Iraq war cut the party's majority from 161 to 66 seats in the 646-seat House of Commons.
Cook, who quit the Cabinet over Blair's support for the war in Iraq, urged the Prime Minister to consider stepping down.
"Anyone on the streets knows we were not elected because Tony Blair was popular this time around," Cook told British Broadcasting Corp. TV.
"The question Tony Blair should be reflecting on this weekend is ... whether now might be a better time to let a new leader in who could then achieve the unity we need if we are going to go forward," he added.
Other less senior Labour lawmakers also urged Blair's departure, but Blair loyalists within the Cabinet dismissed the calls for him to go.
"I have got enormous sympathy for the people who have lost their seats but let's face it, they would not have had their seats in "97 and 2001 if it was not for the appeal and the reach-out of Tony Blair," David Blunkett, the newly appointed Work and Pensions Secretary, told BBC TV.
