(2006-09-07) — Prime Minister Tony Blair’s spokesman today attempted to distance him from excerpts of a draft resignation speech, reportedly written by the beleaguered British leader, that’s making the rounds on the Internet.

According to the unverified manuscript, Mr. Blair plans to say, “Sadly, I must acknowledge that many of my own countrymen and even members of my own party have become Bin Laden’s poodles.”

“They’re demonstrating the same equivocating spirit that cheered Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler and later drove Churchill out,” Mr. Blair allegedly wrote. “It’s the same fickle attitude that celebrated the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, then turned around and brought down Margaret Thatcher the very next year. Psychologists have a word for this condition.”

With this week’s resignation of eight of his own cabinet members, Mr. Blair said he’s “freshening the resume” and looking at his options, including a potential Defense Secretary post in the administration of U.S. President George Bush, “in the event that Congress comes down with the British flu and runs Rumsfeld off.”