I imagine that cannabis, via this entry, isn't a priority for the Labour party at the moment, though no doubt that Tony Blair would like a joint to take his mind off the singularly most threatening knock to his career yet.
Labour took a pounding in local elections, with the party losing 460 seats nationwide, and now Blair has to convince edgy members of his party in Parliament that they will not suffer the same fate during the General Election next year, which is the vote for Prime Minister. Although the incumbent party, whether Tory or Labour, has traditionally faced poor results in local elections, the results of last Thursday are significant given the message that they packed.
Labour fell to third place, a place normally reserved for the Liberal Democrats. But Charles Kennedy's anti-war Lib Dems catapulted to second place with 29 percent of the vote to Labour's 26 percent. The Conservatives did best at 38 percent.
Tony Blair conceded that "Iraq has been a shadow over our support." But if that really was true, how come the Tories - who also supported the war - fared so well? The success that Tories and Lib Dems alike enjoyed at Labour’s expense was a sign of people's dissatisfaction with the way in which the Blair government operates, rather than Iraq per se.
In the 2000 local elections, Labour captured only 29 percent of the vote; this was long before the Iraq War. It was a year before September 11, 2001. Whatever haunted Labour in 2000 appears to have dragged on four years later.
People want the Prime Minister to explain why he intends to stay the course, not soundbites clarifying merely that he will stay the course. They want to hear that although the Iraq war may yet produce much good, that he joined the war coalition based on faulty information. They want to be assured that they will have a voice on Europe through the planned referendum, and that crime will be considered a priority. They want a Blair they can trust, not merely a Blair that says "trust me."
Can Blair survive? Of course. There is still every good chance that Blair will win the right to yet again reside at No. 10 Downing Street. But Labour knows what it has to do to hang on to the mantle. Or so one hopes.
Article comments
1 - mike hollihan
Thanks for adding the info about Labour's 2000 numbers. I'm a pro-war American, so it's good to know that Labour isn't necessarily doomed. Should be interesting.
BTW, you didn't mention the UK Independence Party. American press tends to paint them as right-wing isolationist wackies and racists. What's the story there?
2 - Tim Hall
The UK Independance party are basically a single-issue party campaigning for withdrawal from the EU. They also make some populist rightwing noises about immigration and crime. There are suggestions that at least some of them are crypto-fascists, but I'd still rather have them than the neo-nazi BNP.
Labour did very badly in local elections four years ago; they came back to win the general election a year later with a big majority. My prediction is that Labour will win a third term, but with a much smaller majority.
The results for the European Parliament elections will be announced tomorrow; I expect these results will not be good for the Tories.
3 - RJ Elliott
"I'm a pro-war American, so it's good to know that Labour isn't necessarily doomed."
Huh? If Labour loses, the Tories win. And the Tories are more pro-war and pro-American than Labour. Tony Blair is a rare Labourite who supports the US.
The Lib Dems have been a joke for about 80 years. They won't win enough seats to be able to form the next government. It's either Labour or the Conservatives. I prefer the Conservative. (Though a Labour Party headed by Blair isn't a terrible thing either...)
4 - Tim Hall
The Tories aren't going to win with an overall majority. And anyway, Michael "Something of the Night" Howard is so cynical and opportunistic that I don't think you can guarantee his position on any subject.
As for the Liberal Democrates being "a joke", nobody (especially the Liberal Democrats themselves) seriously believes in a Lib Dem government. But the next election could well produce a hung parliament with the Lib Dems holding the balance of power. They have 10% of the seats in the current Parliament.
5 - Mark Edward Manning
RJ, I am a pretty conservative guy, yet I believe in New Labour. I would never vote for the Labour of old. But Blair has transformed the party into a largely Centrist party with a slight Right-wing bent, with overtones of the Left. I don't worry about the overtones - it's a lot more important to me what Blair does, not says. He loses support among the Old Labour MPs on education fees and the Iraq War, but if he can keep the Old Labourites at bay while adding right-leaning ministers to the party, that would be all for the best.
The Tories are traditionally pro-American, but Michael Howard, only a few weeks ago, grilled the PM over Iraq. Howard is not so enamored of America now that there is such a strong Bush-Blair alliance. I believe the Conservatives did well based on this apparent cynicism from Howard over Blair and Iraq.
Thirdly, the UK Independence Party, formed in 1993, is headed by a former Labour MP and BBC talk-show host named Robert Kilroy-Silk. The other prominent member of UKIP is Joan Collins, who's never before voted but considers Europe such a threat that it catipulted her into politics. I do not know much about what else UKIP plans other than a complete withdrawal from Europe, which I consider a good thing. I'm surprised the American press would portray the UKIP as racists when a united Europe is the last thing America wants. The British National Party (BNP) is far more racist and far-Right than the UKIP. I don't entertain the thought for one moment that UKIP is another BNP style party. They are simply a single-issue party, and it's that one single issue - Europe - that has given them the most controversy.
6 - mike hollihan
Thanks Mark & Tim. In American media, isolationist and right-wing are always code for "racist." Glad you cleared it up.
I'm not pro-Labour. Heavens no! But Blair has proven steadfast in his support for America across two very different administrations, and his strong support for the war despite unrelenting opposition is something I'd like to see continue.
7 - Mark Edward Manning
Tony Blair has really made an incredible personal transformation. In the wake of Reagan's recent death, an Evening Standard columnist wrote that he was puzzled that Blair attended Reagan's funeral considering he spent most of the '80s fuming over Reagan's policies. But when Neil Kinnock brought Labour defeat in '92, Blair swore that he himself would not only bring Labour to victory in '97 but that he would change the face of the party while he was at it. To study Blair is to have the portrait of a man that moved from the extremities of the Left more towards the center.
Incidentally, Blair is a liberal interventionist which is why he was consistent in the Yugoslavian war of 1999 and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars of the first Bush administration.
8 - Eric Olsen
I like liberal interventionists - they can get away with a lot more than conservative interventionists, who are forever doomed to have their motives called into question. It's the "Nixon and China" "Clinton and welfare reform and NAFTA" thing.
Thanks for all the info MEM and all, very interesting.