Despite having led New Labour to a historic third successive victory, Prime Minister Tony Blair finds himself insecure in the face of the demand within the party for a change of leadership.
HASAN SUROOR in LondonA "HISTORIC" win? Or a "bloody nose"? Does Prime Minister Tony Blair deserve a pat on the back for leading the Labour Party back to a third successive term in office, becoming the first-ever Labour Prime Minister to do so in the United Kingdom? Or a slap on the wrist for the party's heavily slashed majority?
These are the questions being debated in the U.K. following the Labour Party's mixed performance in the recent general elections, which was held in a climate of deep hostility towards Blair, who is widely seen to have "lied" about the reasons for invading Iraq.
On the face of it, the Labour victory is a "historic" achievement matched only by former Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher's record in 1979, and the party has been keen to play it up - at least in public. Blair and other party leaders insist that there is only one way to read the verdict - namely, that the people have once again renewed their "faith" in Labour policies, even if they were unhappy with some of the things the government did in the past eight years.
But critics have seized on the government's embarrassingly reduced majority - from 161 in the last Parliament to 66 in the new one - to claim that voters have given Blair a "bloody nose", punishing him not only for his Iraq misadventure but also for his "presidential" style and his agenda of creeping privatisation of public services.
The headlines even in pro-Labour newspapers as the results were announced were not about the party's "historic" win but about the reverses it suffered. "Blair Limps Back," was the screaming headline in The Times, which, under Rupert Murdoch, has been batting for Blair while a clearly anguished Guardian highlighted the Labour's "setbacks" and the "damage" caused to Blair's authority. Time was "running out" for Blair, it said in a front-page banner. The Independent, deploying a double-entendre, called Blair "The History Man" - as someone about to be consigned to history despite his "record" third term.
In their more candid moments, Blair's supporters too acknowledge that the loss of nearly 100 seats in an election that was devoid of any credible Opposition is a blow to his personal authority. The party lost as many as four Ministers and some of its safest seats - most embarrassingly Blaenau Gwent in Wales, represented in the past by such historical Labour figures as Aneurin Bevan and Michael Foot.
"This is what you get when you don't listen to the people," said Peter Law, the independent candidate who overturned Labour's seemingly invincible majority in Blaenau Gwent.
Once a senior Labour figure, Law was expelled for protesting against the central leadership's decision to impose an all-women shortlist on the constituency. Another nasty surprise came from George Galloway, a former Labour Member of Parliament who was expelled over his controversial appeal to British soldiers in Iraq not to fight. He defeated Oona King, a Blair loyalist, on an anti-war platform - one of the few seats won by his newly formed Respect Party. He called his victory a "vindication" for the anti-war movement. "Mr Blair, this is Iraq... .This defeat and all the defeats new Labour have suffered are for Iraq. All the people you have killed, all the lies told have come back to haunt you and the best thing the Labour Party can do would be to sack you... ," an angry Galloway declared. Intemperate words, but they resonated strongly in anti-war circles.
Among the high-profile Labour leaders who struggled to retain their seats was Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, whose predominantly Muslim electorate in Blackburn seethed with anger over Iraq. In the end, he scraped through with a reduced margin because of his personal standing in the area. Even anti-war Labour candidates such as former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who resigned from the government over Iraq, had a hard time. Cook said he was told by people in his constituency that they would not vote for him because of the Labour Party's support to the war. "If it was like that for me, it might have been at least as strong for others," he said.
One sitting Blair-ite candidate, Anne Campbell, who lost her seat though she had voted against the war, said Blair had been a liability. "There were quite a lot of people saying to me if Gordon Brown (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) were Prime Minister they would vote Labour," she said.
Clearly, many Labour MPs believe that Blair cost them votes. Indeed, a number of party candidates did not use Blair's photograph in their campaign material in order to demonstrate their "distance" from him.
Behind his brave rhetoric and tight smile, Blair himself appeared chastened after losing several seasoned sitting MPs and seeing the party's share of the national vote plummet to a historic low. One journalist who was with him on the night of the results wrote: "The Prime Minister's taut, pallid face... was that of a man who has just survived an unpleasantly narrow escape, a shaken politician who had seen the ground rushing up to meet him."
In his first public reaction to the outcome, Blair admitted that Iraq had been a "deeply divisive" issue and promised to listen to the people more in the future.
"I have listened and I have learned. And I think I have a very clear idea of what the British people now expect from this government for a third term. And I want to say to them very directly that I, we, the government are going to focus relentlessly now on the priorities the people have set for us," an ashen-faced Blair said.
He also acknowledged that the party did not enjoy the same level of trust as before and said: "We have to respond to that sensibly, wisely and responsibly."
Similar sentiments, acknowledging the need for the government to "listen" to the people more often, have been voiced by other Labour leaders, including Blair-loyalist David Blunkett, who has been brought back into the Cabinet and given the politically sensitive portfolio of Works and Pensions. "We need to hear the voice of the British people. In the next five years, we will need to be in touch with people... building confidence in politics and politicians," he said.
OF the other two national parties, the Conservatives did unexpectedly well, winning more than 30 seats on the back of an anti-immigration campaign that clearly went down well in predominantly white areas, especially in the countryside. The party leader, Michael Howard, said he was "proud" of the campaign. "We have taken a stand on the things that really do matter to the people of this country," he said before announcing that he would be stepping down soon as he had not been able to deliver a victory.
The Liberal Democrats fell short of expectations - their own as well as the voters'. The party, benefiting mostly from anti-Labour "protest" vote, significantly improved its share of the national vote but was not able to gain many extra seats. It failed to win in any of the marginal seats where it had threatened to defeat the Conservatives. Nevertheless, party leader Charles Kennedy sounded upbeat. He said that with about a dozen more seats in the bag, his party was poised to play a "major role" in Parliament. He said the voters had ushered in an era of "three-party politics" in the U.K., with his party emerging as a "truly national party".
Among the fringe groups, the racist British National Party (BNP) failed to win any of the seats it contested but, ominously, attracted a large number of votes, emboldening it to claim that it is "getting there".
MEANWHILE, the simmering power struggle in the Labour Party has intensified with supporters of Gordon Brown, who is widely seen to be the Prime Minister-in-waiting, piling on the pressure on Blair to take responsibility for the party's performance and step down. Although Blair has already announced that he would not contest a fourth term, more and more MPs want him to leave before his current term ends. Barely hours after the new government took over, Robin Cook set the ball rolling by demanding that Blair set a time-table for his departure. "How can he imagine that the millions of voters who deserted Labour over Iraq... will return while he remains as leader?" he asked, setting in motion a highly charged campaign for Blair's resignation.
The call is no longer confined to the "usual suspects" - a hard core of left-wing MPs who were never reconciled to Blair's agenda - but has been joined by quite a few Blair loyalists as they prepare to reposition themselves ahead of a leadership change.
At the moment, there is no indication that Blair is in a hurry to oblige them, but any appearance that he wants to "go on and on, and on" in defiance of the wishes of a significant section of his own MPs could trigger a leadership challenge that he may find difficult to overcome. Remember Margaret Thatcher, who was forced to quit after famously declaring that the "Lady is not for turning"? History could well repeat itself if Blair allows the push to come to a shove.
