Everyone's fault but Tony's

England went to the polls in local body elections today - and delivered a drubbing for Labour. Labour lost 250 council seats, and came third, being narrowly beaten by the Lib Dems - its worst local body result since 1982. Tony Blair has responded with a Cabinet bloodbath, sacking his incompetant Home Secretary and stripping his scandal-wracked Deputy Prime Minister of all portfolio responsibilities. Other heads rolled as well - Jack Straw being shuffled out of the Foreign Office to make way for a Blair loyalist less likely to be troublesome on Iran; Ruth Kelly being pushed out of education for failing to sell Blair's school "reforms". With the exception of Gordon Brown (Chancellor of the Exchequer and Blair's heir presumptive), the entire Cabinet has been sacked or shuffled. But in all of this, Tony has missed the true cause of the problem: himself. This poor electoral showing is not solely due to recent scandals and bad press (though they probably helped); it's a symptom of long-term dissatisfaction with Blair himself - with the war, with arrogance, spin, and corruption, with the direction he has taken his party in - a direction many traditional Labour voters disagree with violently.

This is not a problem that can be solved with a Cabinet reshuffle, unless the man at the head of the table is also dealt out of the deck. Unfortunately, Blair seems constitutionally incapable of admitting that. But if he can't or won't resign, then his own MPs are going to have to force him out - because the simple fact is that if he stays, they'll be de-elected.