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. 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.
Mrs. Brown had just given birth to the couple's second child, a son, and the proud father was at the family home near Edinburgh. Despite the famous namesake, Watson is not a golfer but that weekend he was staying, as luck would have it, at the St. Andrews golf resort. 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. 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.
The next day Watson returned to London. 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 supplied, for example--he did what comes more naturally to politicians. He orchestrated a plot. Watson penned his signature to a letter circulating among some backbench Labour MPs calling on Blair to step down.
Trouble had been brewing in the Labour ranks for months. 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. 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.
But for many in the party this unusual act of self-term-limiting was not enough. 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 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. The prime minister's enemies within the party returned from their summer holiday demanding blood. When he gave an interview to the Times on September 1 insisting he would not set a date for his departure, they moved.
We shall probably never know if Watson's treachery was a direct result of the impromptu Brown baby shower, but the result was explosive. 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. The following day, Brown, now also back in London, confronted Blair at 10 Downing Street about his plans. It was by all accounts a turbulent meeting that ended without resolution. Blair's friends say Brown threatened wave after wave of ministerial resignations if Blair did not give a firm, early date for his departure. Brown denies making threats, but says he did have "questions" about the prime minister's future.
The two met again later that day. And the day after that, Thursday, September 7, bowing to the pressure, Blair announced he would be gone within a year. Which most observers take to mean some time next spring, although it could happen sooner. Next week's annual Labour party conference, expected to be bloody, may accelerate the transition.
British politicians and the reporters who cover them have spent far too much of their childhood reading Shakespeare. For the last week, the political conversation has been thick with lines from Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet. 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.
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. We know too that his premature departure was occasioned principally by his support for the United States. 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.
