LONDON, 27 September 2003 — British Prime Minister Tony Blair stormed to power in 1997 promising “things can only get better.” As he braces for the toughest Labour Party conference of his leadership, he may be asking if they can get any worse. Blair’s popularity and trust ratings have nosedived in the messy aftermath of the Iraq conflict. The failure to unearth any weapons of mass destruction, the suicide of a government expert on Iraq and the inquiry into his death have raised serious questions over the case Blair made for war.
The public turned against him in a recent London by-election — dealing Labour a defeat in what had been a rock-solid seat — while party members and the unions are rebelling over his siding with the United States on Iraq and unpopular domestic policies.
Blair, once Labour’s biggest electoral asset to “Middle England”, must convince his party’s five-day annual conference in Bournemouth, which starts tomorrow, that he has not become a handicap.
The latest Guardian/ICM poll this week showed that 61 percent of voters are unhappy with the job he is doing. Blair had hoped to make a fresh start after the summer, wrecked by the suicide of top weapons expert David Kelly.
But the inquiry into Kelly’s death, which closed on Thursday, may not report back until December, prolonging the agony for a government that risks criticism over its handling of Kelly and over how it convinced Britain to back the Iraq war.
The failure to find any banned weapons in Iraq has dogged Blair at every juncture. Anti-war Labour members are pushing for a debate at the Bournemouth conference on Iraq and the need to pull British troops out. That could prove an embarrassing blow for the embattled prime minister.
“There’s a lot of anger about what’s happened over Iraq and of course it gets worst by the day,” Alice Mahon, a Labour member of Parliament, told Reuters.
Iraq proved a key factor in Labour’s by-election defeat earlier this month. There are reports that Labour members from the constituency, Brent East, may even call for a leadership contest at Bournemouth.
Mahon believes the party must refocus on bread-and-butter domestic issues, “because that is what we promised in our manifesto. We didn’t promise to take people to war.”
Polls show the public has yet to feel promised improvements to public services and disgruntled conference-goers may vote against controversial policies on education and heath funding. Media speculated this week that things were so bad at home that Blair, who revels in the role of global statesman, chose to miss the United Nations General Assembly.
