The knives are sheathed but the scalping goes on

How very predictable politics is at times, never mind where or when. The recent confrontation between Prime Minister Tony Blair and his chancellor Gordon Brown, perceived by some as his inevitable heir apparent, in their battle for office and place could have happened in Colombo.

We have all seen it before though it did not get as bloody as the battle between the two Bs as Brown tried to corner Blair in what some considered a putsch in which the chancellor possibly had a hand, as some have speculated.

It is a charge that has been hotly denied by the Brown camp but left many sceptical when it later emerged that one of the 'plotters' who signed a letter asking Blair to go had met Brown in the chancellor's home in Scotland the day before the letter reached No 10 Downing Street.

The plot thickens, so to say, as both were quick to say that it was only a social call and politics never cropped up in the conversation. Those who know politics and politicians would naturally wonder how it was that not a word of politics passed between two politicians- one who had just signed or was about to do so, a stinging letter to the prime minister and the other who wants to don the premier's hat.

In our own time in Colombo we have seen the struggle for the premiership between Sir John Kotelawala and Dudley Senanayake after the sudden death of then prime minister Don Stephen Senanayake.

Sir John who thought he had the job for the taking suddenly found at the UNP parliamentary group meeting one morning that it had slipped away from his grasp. Those who were at the top in Lake House then would know how the tide turned.

We have seen the behind-the-scenes struggle, again in the UNP to succeed President JR Jayewardene, between Ranasinghe Premadasa, who many considered the rightful successor, on the one hand, and Gamini Dissanayake and Lalith Athulathmudali on the other.

More recently Sri Lankans have witnessed the more public claim made by Mahinda Rajapaksa to be anointed prime minister under Chandrika Kumaratunga and later to become her successor.

Though there might have been anger and bitterness in these struggles for power, none of them seemed to have plunged to the acrimonious depths that the Blair-Brown clash descended to two weeks back.

It was generally accepted in the Labour Party and in the country, that Gordon Brown would succeed Tony Blair as the leader of the party and then lead it at the next election due by 2008. Brown would be the prime minister- in-waiting.

It is undeniable that Tony Blair's success as a Labour prime minister is unprecedented. He led an increasingly despondent party to the third consecutive election victory last year, a record that no previous Labour prime minister could claim.

The only other claimant who could match Blair's performance in recent years is the rival Conservative Party's Margaret Thatcher.

Yet for all the victories that Blair could claim he is in the throes of the political cut-throatism that Thatcher herself suffered and of which Blair would be a victim in the not too distant future.

Thatcher was brought down in 1990 and the Tories' suffered for years without a charismatic leader.

One might well ask how it is that two such successful prime ministers who not only led the country for so long but also stamped their personality on it could end up by being hounded by the very parties that they resurrected from the dustbins of history.

Why not! Britain's wartime prime minister Winston Churchill who led the country to victory over Nazi Germany was defeated at the very next election.

Cynics will have no trouble in saying that it is in the nature of politics to devour oneself as some reptiles reportedly do. The analogy is not without point for the political arena is a snake pit and those who survive do so because they are more poisonous than others or have the resources with which to fight other contenders for dominance.

Despondency in the Labour Party began when Blair led his country into war in Iraq in what seemed like a deferential bow to his transatlantic partner George W. Bush, brushing aside concerns within his own party and the opposition of millions of British people.

In opting for war many people believe that Blair misled not only parliament to secure a crucial vote but also that the intelligence on which the decision was supposedly made was doctored by his aides to suit a political purpose.

That decision and his decision to stand resolutely by President Bush in the aftermath might have made Blair popular among a wide swath of American people but it earned him no popularity among his own.

Though last year's election was won by Labour the turn out was low and so was the support for the party. At that time Blair vowed that he will not lead the party at the next election.

That is precisely what some in the party wanted to hear for they thought Blair was increasingly becoming an electoral liability. It was also music to Gordon Brown's ears. The time had come, as the Walrus said to the carpenter, to talk of many things-particularly when the crown would pass on to him.

But the more he waited in the wings, the more time Blair seemed to be taking to prepare for his departure, soliloquising like a Hamlet burdened with doubt. To go or not to go was not the question. When to go was what was nagging him for he wanted to chose his time and place and make one grand exit.

But Brown and the Brownites would like to see him go sooner than later and when Blair hitched his foreign policy wagon to the fading star in the White House over the Lebanese crisis, those in the Labour Party who had doubts over their own fortunes at the next election, quickly prepared for the next act.

They decided to force Blair to quit early and make way for Brown who would perhaps think of them positively when governments are made and jobs are distributed.

There was no blood on the stage as the knives dug in, like in the political assassination in Julius Caesar. But treachery and self preservation, those cardinal requirements of political survival, were very much on display.

The next months will be interesting as the push-pull system of political power play works overtime and the jockeying for power grabs the media headlines.