BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair must be thankful that yesterday’s elections in parts of the UK were not for Parliament. If they had been, he would be out of a job. The swing against Labour was massive; it won less votes than the center Liberal Democrats, just 23 percent of the total. The Conservatives took around 40 percent of the vote. In the event they were local elections, which means Blair can breathe safely knowing that it is not going to affect his majority in Parliament. But the contest — the biggest poll of public opinion outside a general election, with 23 million eligible to vote — is a sign of things to come. Whatever the election, whether municipal, national or European, the British public invariably votes on national issues, such as the health service, the fitness of ministers or foreign policy. Yesterday was no different — and showed that British public sentiment is firmly anti-Labour; the Conservatives had their best local poll showing since 1992.
That is no surprise. Labour is mired in scandals not particularly different from those that brought the last Conservative government to ruin. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott’s admission of an affair with his secretary; the scandal at the Home Office over failure to deport over a thousand foreign criminals and the refusal of Home Secretary Charles Clark to accept responsibility for such incompetence; unanswered questions about Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt’s private financial arrangements together with lingering suspicions that the health service is not safe in her hands. All this, plus the expectation that Blair’s plan to retire will happen before the end of the year, has soured the government’s standing in British eyes. There is also Labour’s foreign policy, notably the conflict in Iraq and Blair’s seemingly craven and unlimited support for President Bush. It has certainly added to Labour’s woes, although less so than any of the other issues.
The view that it has passed its sell-by date and is now living on borrowed time is widespread, and for Labour extremely dangerous. It is difficult to see what can revive its fortunes even though a general election is a good two years away.
The arrival of the prime minister-in-waiting, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown is not fortuitous. He has no public fan club, being seen as capable but ambitious, calculating and cold — and capability is not always admired describing the man in charge of raising and collecting taxes. Brown is likely to prove a very short-term premier — 18 months in office at the most — and not because of the popularity or unpopularity of Labour policy. Quite simply the British are tired of Labour, and do not particularly trust it. In the immediate term, Blair, the past master of hype, media manipulation and calculated presentation, hopes to bury the bad election news with his Cabinet reshuffle originally planned for Monday but brought forward to yesterday for that very purpose. It will not work. The British have seen him spinning too often; they are no longer taken in. It may be two years away but the end is in sight for Labour in Britain.
