| Submit your comments on this article |
| Britain |
| Will Voters Pull the Plug in Britain? |
| 2006-05-04 |
| Tony Blair has had more near-death experiences in the last few years than Jack Bauer. Today he will grimace and grunt through another harrowing 24 hours when English voters go the polls in elections for local governments across the country. If things go really badly the men and women behind the character that has dominated the British political schedules for almost a decade may decide it's time to pull the plug. Local elections used to be just that - local. But these days, the media's insatiable need to keep a permanent check on the pulse of the voter has turned Tip O'Neill's famous dictum on its head. So when people from Carlisle to Penwith go to the polls today to choose the representatives who will vote funds for street cleaning and grave-digging they will, in post-hoc interpretation if not in ante-hoc intent, be passing judgment on the prime minister, his government, the Iraq conflict, the disappearance of Norwegian glaciers and the future of western civilisation as we have known it. Blair's Labour will fare badly; no-one doubts that. Governing parties always get mauled in these mid-terms. Turnout is risibly low - perhaps not more than one in four eligible voters will go to the polls today. Even in good times, government supporters are much less inclined to make the trip out to affirm their faith. And these are not good times for Labour. Dissatisfaction with Blair and his government precisely mirrors sentiment in the US about President Bush and the Republicans; barely a third of the electorate approves of them. Last week, his rapidly wasting asset of a Cabinet managed to devalue itself further in public esteem with some well-aimed kicks at its own nether regions. John Prescott, Blair's hefty deputy, was forced to confess to an affair with his 43-year old diary secretary ("Lardy and The Tramp", quipped one tabloid). Charles Clarke, the home secretary, was forced to confess that he didn't really know the whereabouts of 1000 or more foreigners who had been released from British jails into the community instead of being deported. Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, was forced to confess to a conference of angry nurses that she didn't really have any solutions to the mounting financial problems of Britain's national health service. Meanwhile the government is trying to fend off an increasingly aggressive investigation into a pounds-for-peerages scandal - in which wealthy donors are alleged to have given money to Labour and its favourite projects in exchange for a seat in the House of Lords. There you have it. The Four Horsemen of modern political mortality - Lust, Ineptitude, Indifference and Cupidity. Add in some lingering hostility to the Iraq war and a potent combination of boredom with and contempt for a prime minister who's been in office for nine years, and you have a pretty lethal mix. Unfortunately for him, it is at just this moment that Blair faces the voters over the garden fences of middle England. Having promised in last year's general election campaign to step down before the next election, Blair has already limited his options. Since everyone knows he's going, the argument goes, why prolong it? His closest aides still think he can soldier on for another year or so before handing over to his designated and increasingly restive neighbour Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer. But the betting in Westminster is that if the results are bad enough tonight they could accelerate the prime minister's departure from Downing Street. How bad do they have to be? Labour could well finish third in the popular vote behind both the main opposition Conservatives and Labour's fellow lefties the Liberal Democrats. That has happened before in local elections and would not of itself necessarily be terminal. Blair may indeed be helped somewhat by the diffusion of anti-government votes. The Tories who, if the history of local elections is a guide, should be making massive gains, may not advance all that much from their position in the equivalent elections four years ago. The Liberal Democrats are still a local force rather than a plausible alternative government. Most intriguing will be the strength of other parties- the Greens, the anti-European UK Independence Party, the anti-war Respect party of Saddam Hussein's friend George Galloway and the rebarbative, neo-fascist, anti-immigration British National Party. If they all advance at Labour's expense it will muddy the waters somewhat and make it easier for Blair to claim the elections were no more than a passing protest, with people depositing their votes in the nearest available receptacle, safe in the knowledge they wouldn't actually be choosing a government. But come tomorrow morning this may sound like whistling past the graveyard. Thousands of Labour councilors will wake up out of their (part-time) jobs, their immediate political prospects in tatters. If they and their friends on Labour's benches in the House of Commons decide Blair is the culprit, they will surely increase the tension up the line to their political leaders to do something about it. What's more there is a growing mood, even among some of Gordon Brown's harshest critics that he should be given a chance to end the uncertainty of Blair's long farewell and get on with the task of governing and getting Labour into shape to win the next general election. A day after these same local elections in 1990, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher shrugged off her Conservative party's disastrous performance at the polls. But the results were an indelible demonstration of the voters' impatience with an increasingly unpopular leader, and six months later her own party terminated her leadership. There's no chance Labour will commit that kind of regicide. But a bad day at the polls today could end up having the same ultimate effect. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #3 Local elections TW, but like everything these days media wants to examine with a microscope. |
| Posted by: 6 2006-05-04 16:17 |
| #2 How did I miss noticing England was heading into an election? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-05-04 16:08 |
| #1 And these are not good times for Labour. Dissatisfaction with Blair and his government precisely mirrors sentiment in the US about President Bush and the Republicans; barely a third of the electorate approves of them. Actually - if it sentiment precisely mirrors sentiment for the party in power in the US, then Labour will retain and perhpas even increase their hold on power. |
| Posted by: 2b 2006-05-04 11:59 |