The recent Labour Party experience in council elections was reminiscent of the Republican Party with Nixon and the Watergate Scandal.

In the earlier case elder statesman Barry Goldwater, seeing Republicans lose congressional off year, or what the British would term by-elections, House seats that the party had held since the Civil War, visited the White House and told Richard Nixon that he had no support in any prospective impeachment trial.

Goldwater stressed that Nixon needed to immediately resign for the sake of his party and the nation.

Based on media disclosures, it appeared as if the earlier American example was emulated when a significant segment of Labour MP's during its party conference declared that Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had promised earlier to resign before his current term ended, needed to take that act sooner rather than later.