Nope. Disagree. Your premise requires the entirety of the Labour party to be stupid enough not to see this happening. You've seen this as a possibilitly, therefore... We must presume that enough others have...

I wouldn't dispute the point that Blair's ego is running fairly freely (not actually out of control, because his parliamentary majority isn't large enough to allow such), but that's another issue.

No, Blair's not mad, but he is a very crafty politician. 'Nuff said.

R