Labour rules

The Labour party Rule Book (what is usually called a constitution) is an ill-drafted and often silent document, whose difficulty of interpretation is, I suspect, a political tool.

It states:
Leader and deputy leader
(a) There shall be a leader and deputy leader of the party who shall, ex-officio, be leader and deputy leader of the PLP.
(b) The leader and deputy leader of the party shall be elected or re-elected from among Commons members of the PLP in accordance with procedural rule 4B.2, at a party conference convened in accordance with clause VI of these rules.
In respect to the election of the leader and deputy leader, the standing orders of the PLP shall always automatically be brought into line with these rules.
...
i) When the party is in government and the party leader is prime minister and the party leader, for whatever reason, becomes permanently unavailable,

the Cabinet shall, in consultation with the NEC, appoint one of its members to serve as party leader until a ballot under these rules can be carried out.

ii) When the party is in government and the deputy leader becomes party leader under (i) of this rule, the Cabinet may, in consultation with the NEC, appoint one of its members to serve as deputy leader until the next party conference. The Cabinet may alternatively, in consultation with the NEC, leave the post vacant until the next party conference.

If Blair resigns as Party leader this week, but does not go to the head of state to resign the office of prime minister then the question ‘why not?’ receives no satisfactory reply from the claim that time is needed to organize the election to the Labour party leadership of his successor before the head of state can call on the new Labour leader to form an administration.

The Rule Book ‘s provision for an immediate substitution of a ‘permanently unavailable’ Party leader ‘When the party is in government and the party leader is prime minister ‘ is clearly designed to deal with precisely the contingency of a resigning (or arrested, or dead) Party leader. (It is noteworthy that the Rule book seems to envisage a situation where the Party leader might not be prime minister, although the Party is in government).

Why does Blair not resign from leadership and prime ministerial office, the cabinet appoint Brown leader until there is a confirmatory ballot, and Brown go to the palace to accept the invitation to form an administration? What is the purpose of the hiatus; or have the media misunderstood the process that will occur?

A prime minister has two great powers, to recommend his successor, and to recommend a dissolution. His advice on either of these has not been disregarded for over a century. What is Blair trading for those weeks in which the Labour party acts out an unnecessary electoral process that all know to have an inevitable outcome?