Tag Archives: observer

Tony Blair descended into such a deep depression after the Iraq war that he told Gordon Brown and John Prescott he would quit No 10 the following summer – only to renege on the pledge within months, a new book by the Observer's Andrew Rawnsley reveals. The former prime minister's physical and mental decline was so profound that he confided to friends that he “spaced out” several times during Prime Minister's Questions and often woke up in the middle of the night with sweat trickling down the back of his neck. Rawnsley's explosive account is in The End of the Party, which is published on Monday , extracts from which appear in tomorrow's Observer. It lays bare, for the first time, how Blair was haunted and tormented by the deepening chaos and bloodshed in Iraq at the same time as being worn down by the constant psychological warfare being waged by Brown, his next-door neighbour in Downing Street, who was increasingly desperate to take his job. While Blair's gift for presentation helped him hide his depression from the public and most of his staff, his private turmoil was so severe that he decided there was nothing for it but to hand over to Brown midway through his second term. Rawnsley is the first journalist to detail how Blair, in those darkest days, made clear at a dinner with both Brown and Prescott in November 2003, and later in a telephone call to Prescott in spring 2004, that he would step down. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/27/andrew-rawnsley-tony-blair-iraq added by: jeffissleeping