Bagehot: They'll miss him

摘要

"We don't want to lose you, but we think you ought to go." The words on the famous first world war recruiting poster sum up the tangle of emotions that gripped the Labour conference in Manchester after Tony Blair's beautifully judged farewell speech to his party. Labour is apprehensive of the future without Mr Blair and well aware that his likely successor has neither a fraction of his star quality nor the perfect pitch of his appeal to the crucial voters of middle England. But they also applauded when the prime minister said that although letting go was hard, it was right "for the country, and for you, the party".