Labour peer calls for Blair to resign

Tony Blair's reputation is so damaged by Iraq that he should step down before the summer, a senior Labour peer said yesterday.

Tony Blair's reputation is so damaged by Iraq that he should step down before the summer, a senior Labour peer said yesterday.

Lord Puttnam said the Prime Minister is now synonymous with bad news and should move aside in favour of Gordon Brown, the Chancellor. His comments echo those of Lord Healey, the former Labour chancellor, who urged Mr Blair to quit a few days earlier.

Lord Puttnam, better known as the film-maker David Puttnam, said months of negative headlines about Iraq would damage Labour's electoral prospects and that Mr Blair should go before the parliamentary recess.

"The Prime Minister is synonymous with Iraq, and Iraq will only deliver bad news," he told the ITV News Channel. "Tony Blair's legacy will be what happens in Iraq five years from now. There will be no good news for the next 12, 15, 18 months.

"Five years from now, we may all look back and say, 'you know what, the Prime Minister was right; a sensible democratic regime has emerged'. But that will be ... far too late to help the aspirations, and indeed horrible fears, of a lot of Labour backbenchers.

"If I were him, I would go before the summer recess. And I think he can go with honour and I think he may well be in a position in five years from now to say not only did I do the right thing, but I paid a very high price for doing it."

Mr Blair's personal rating in the polls is already falling. Lord Puttnam said he would come under pressure from insecure Labour MPs who were beginning to realise that Iraq was overshadowing the Government's achievements.

He said the Chancellor would "inevitably" be the man to take over. "Gordon Brown is exactly the person ... [to] focus things on the domestic agenda. And I suspect he would be able to win quite comfortably at a general election were it to be held within the next 12 months."