|
|
|
|
Iraq costs Blair dearly at the
polls
By J Sean Curtin
LONDON - The Iraq war has
strongly influenced the United Kingdom general
election, seriously undermining Prime Minister
Tony Blair, who was one of the staunchest
supporters of United States President George W
Bush's Iraq policy.
Although the Labour
Party has been returned to office for a third
term, its majority is sharply reduced, and it
comes back into government on just 36% of the
vote, the lowest ever percentage in British
electoral history. The Conservative Party received
33% and the anti-war Liberal Democrats shot up to
23%, getting their largest number of seats since
1923.
In 1997, Blair had a majority of 178
and in 2001 he managed 167. This time projections
estimate it will be about 66.
The result almost certainly means that Blair will not
serve a full term as premier. He has already
conceded that Iraq seriously harmed his party's
standing. At least 50 strongly anti-war Labour
members of parliament have been reelected, meaning
Blair will find it difficult to manage his
rebellious party with such a sharply reduced
majority.
When the UK general election was
called, the ruling Labour Party expected to be
re-elected with another big majority. The British
economy is strong, the opposition parties
relatively weak, and Labour is widely considered
to have done a good job in office. However, as has
already happened in Italy and Spain (See Spanish
election sets off global shock
wave of March 16, 2004), the
political fallout from the Iraq war has yet again
cast a dark shadow over another European election.
Labour's main electoral
problem was Blair's deep unpopularity. His
reputation suffered a severe battering due to his staunch
support for the US-led invasion of Iraq. Blair was
once seen as his party's greatest asset, but
this time was considered its biggest liability.
Even so, his party's unprecedented third
successive poll victory will ensure that history will
be kinder, remembering Blair as the Labour leader
who gave them a historic election hat-trick.
However, in present day political reality,
the two defeated opposition parties, the
Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, are
pleased with far better results than they could
have expected under normal circumstances, given
the UK economy is so buoyant. The so-called Iraq
factor appears to have saved them from what should
have been a crushing defeat.
Disillusionment over
Iraq
Until the ballots were counted, the
election outcome was uncertain because many core
Labour supporters, deeply disillusioned over Iraq,
told pollsters they would either abstain from
voting or switch allegiance to the anti-war
Liberal Democrats. The effect of this trend on key
marginal seats made predicting the final result
almost impossible. Even though Labour enjoyed a
national poll lead, tactical voting patterns lost
them many seats they would normally expect to have
kept. A lot of Labour lawmakers who lost their
seats openly blamed Blair's Iraq policy.
The surprise of the election was the
incredibly strong showing of the anti-war Liberal
Democrats in many normally safe Labour seats. They
gave Labour a real run for their money and managed
to pick up many more seats than the pollsters
predicted. Blair himself won comfortably in his
own seat, but faced an uncomfortable challenge
from an independent candidate whose young son was
killed in Iraq.
One of the most
astounding results was the victory of the fiercely
anti-war candidate George Galloway, who stood in
one of Labour's safest seats, and against the odds
won. Galloway was a former Labour MP who Blair
expelled from the party for his outspoken
criticism of the war. In a powerful victory
speech, he attacked Blair, saying, "All the people
you killed, all the lies you have told, will come
back to haunt you. The best thing the Labour Party
could do is sack you tomorrow morning."
Vote for Blair to get
Brown
Pre-election polls indicated that if
Blair stepped down before the ballot and was
replaced by his popular finance minister, Gordon
Brown, the party would have easily romped home to
victory. However, the same polls also indicated
that Labour would still probably win under Blair.
So the prime minister refused to quit, knowing
there was little his party could do about it so
close to an election. An internal bloodbath over
the leadership in the run-up to an election would
have been political suicide.
However, party pressure on Blair did force him to
publicly declare that if he won, he would not serve a
full term as prime minister. He also strongly
indicated that Brown would take over from him at some
point.
To further calm the party's nerves,
and attract wavering Labour voters, during the
campaign Blair constantly appeared with Brown at
his side. Wherever Blair went, so did Brown. The
premiership effectively became a two-man show.
This was seen as an attempt to emphasize that
Brown would eventually take over from Blair.
Labour strategists aimed to persuade
disillusioned supporters that they should "vote
for Blair to get Brown". On election day, several
Labour-supporting newspapers rammed home this
message with pictures of Blair and Brown side by
side on their front covers. One could not fail to
get the message that they were getting two for the
price of one vote.
Brown's face, not
Blair's, appeared on the vast majority of Labour
Party election literature. On the Saturday before
the poll, Brown told the media that he would never
allow the UK to go to war without putting the
matter properly before parliament. This was
interpreted as a strong signal to Labour
supporters that a Brown premiership would be more
consensual and less presidential than Blair's.
Brown is an extremely popular figure whose
reputation was not damaged by the controversial
decision to go to war, which is largely seen as
Blair's personal responsibility. After suffering
such losses, it is almost certain that Brown will
soon inherit Blair's crown.
J Sean
Curtin
is a GLOCOM fellow at the Tokyo-based
Japanese Institute of Global Communications.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd.
All rights reserved. Please contact us for
information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong
Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
|
|
|
