It would take an upset of unimaginable proportions to stop British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his socialist Labor party from being returned for a second term of office on June 7. It is not that Blair and his team are particularly appealing or popular. They are not. The electorate has become deeply suspicious of the highly manipulative, PR-driven style of the government.
But in the alternative leader, Conservative William Hague, voters do not see a credible replacement. The third party, the Liberal Democrats have a new and appealing leader in Charles Kennedy, but it is unlikely that they will increase their number of MPs beyond the fifty mark. The major achievements of Blair have been the creation of the Scottish and Welsh assemblies, which have acquired a limited degree of autonomy from central government in Westminster. In education, health and law and order, areas where the socialists promised to make major improvements, massive sums of fresh money have been invested without any noticeable effect. There are, in fact, fewer nurses and doctors, fewer teachers and fewer policemen than when Blair first came to power.
In the past, left-wing British governments have spent their way into deep financial trouble. Under Harold Wilson, the United Kingdom actually had to be bailed out by the IMF. But Blair’s economic record has looked good. The administration’s habit of producing new spending plans, which turned out to be largely old money already announced, tended to boost the feel-good factor if not the actual investment. The government has recently paid off a big lump of the national debt. Thanks to faster-than-expected economic growth, as well as a major boost in indirect taxation, it has also seen its tax coffers swelling. But the good times were never going to last. With a recession looming, Blair clearly thought it best to go to the country before the prosperity began to run dry.
In foreign affairs, the Labor government has often been lackluster. Foreign Minister Robin Cook began by promising to run an ethical foreign policy. But there was no rethink on the tragedy of Palestine, one of the great ethical failures of past British foreign ministers. Fact-finding tours came and went but for most of his first term of office, Tony Blair had UK foreign policy shadowing, more slavishly than usual, the decisions of his close friend Bill Clinton in the White House.
There is within Europe a strong core of opinion that wants justice for the Palestinians and an end to Zionist oppression. It may well be that Blair’s government will identify more strongly with this European argument, thereby adding further weight while reducing British endorsement of the normally slavish US support for Israel and its actions.
There is certainly a belief that a second-term Blair government will be a lot more radical. Traditionally multiterm politicians tend to take a greater interest in foreign affairs but this will probably not hold true for the Premier Blair. His instincts are predominantly domestic or, at best, European. If, as the polls are predicting, Labor inflicts another crushing defeat on the Conservatives, he will almost certainly take it as a mandate to press on with economically costly domestic reforms rather than look for a role as world statesman.
