Blair's dilemma: Barbados or Downing Street Saturday August 12, 09:52 AM
LONDON (AFP) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair has came under strong criticism for carrying on with his holiday in the Caribbean as Britain faces its highest ever terror alert.
"Crisis? Yacht crisis?" was the headline on the front page of the Daily Mail on Saturday, accompanied by a photograph of a grinning Blair standing on the deck of a yacht.
"With Britain in the grip of the latest extremist terror plot, Tony Blair was enjoying his holiday many miles away," the paper wrote.
The Daily Telegraph also opted for a front-page photograph of the Blair family on a dinghy under the headline "Should I stay or should I go?".
Blair delayed leaving Britain for his Caribbean holiday by three days last week to help secure a United Nations resolution on the Middle East conflict.
Nonetheless several British newspapers on Saturday carried articles showing Blair and his wife Cherie on holiday and questioning Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott's role as interim leader.
They pointed out that he did not attend a ministerial crisis meeting on Thursday when the alleged plot to blow up planes across the Atlantic was revealed, and only reappeared in public on Friday for a brief televised statement to assure the public Blair was in constant contact with London.
Instead, they said, it was Home Secretary John Reid who appeared to be in charge.
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