Sooo... What?
I'm unclear about this now. Was it his time to step down? Or was this an unexpected turn of events? Some one explain this to me coz' I can't figure british weird form of government.
The leader of the party in a British parliamentary system (probably includes Australia and definitely includes Canada although there are subtle differences) can step down whenever they want. A similar situation happened here in Canada when Prime Minster Chretien who had been in power for 3 elections stepped down and the finance minister Paul Martin became PM for the rest of the term (then went on to win a minority election and then loose after that). In this system you don't vote for the Prime Minister like you vote for a President in the US. You vote for your local MP (member of parliament) which represents their party and whoever has the most number of MP's in Parliament gets to be the party in power.
Its not perfect. You could hate the party and love the party leader and want that guy to be PM. Or you could hate your local MP but agree with the party overall. Not perfect. What it does offer is a fair bit of flexibility in how power is decided and how the balance of power is played out. For instance in the US 2000 election assuming the use of a parliamentary system (or even the 2004 election) there would have been a minority government meaning that the government could not pass bills without the support of at least some MP's from another party.
The US system is actually far more complex from my perspective...having studied both systems.
As for Blair and stepping down...entirely expected...perhaps a bit too late but nothing I haven't seen before. I suspect the decision had something to do with Mr. Brown being the most likely candidate and that he, being Scottish, might be able to keep Scotland in the UK as I understand there is a growing separatist movement.
