Labour’s historic win; Blair’s downfall?

Tony Blair declared his place in history, leading the Labour party to 3 consecutive win for the first time ever, and the only other leader apart from Margaret Thatcher to win three elections in a row.

Or did he really? With a drastically reduced majority of 167 in the previous parliament now slashed to a mere 67, Labour will be hard pushed to get legislations through government, particularly when many of its own MPs are distancing themselves from the Prime Minister.

Many of Labours MPs are calling the Prime Minister a liability rather than an asset, demanding he steps down within the next 12 to 18 months and hands over the task to his more popular deputy, Gordon Brown.

Many say the Iraq war had been a major factor in eroding confidence in the Prime Minister and rightly so. He has dodged many fires around the issue throughout the campaign, himself admitting in his victory speech that “Iraq has been a devisive issue”. Yet on the other hand, a survey conducted by a British pollster MORI shows Iraq was in fact number 14 out of 16 electoral issues that were considered critical deciding factors by the voters. This would partly be because the opposition Conservatives also supported the invasion of Iraq. The Liberal Democrats seem to have been the one with the antiwar sentiment. Two issues of highest concern were education and health, areas where Labour had its focus.

Tony Blair’s Labour party focused on the National Health Service (NHS), more nutritious school lunches, vowing to ban some unhealthy foods from schools, and promote inter-school sports. When it comes to NHS it seems Labour is still trusted to do a better job than other parties despite the lack of progress since it has been in power the last few years. Moreover, the opposition agrees in principle with the direction that Labour is working on for the NHS, apart from minor details.

The Tories campaigned on such issues as lower taxes, better security through more police, fighting teenage binge drinking and tougher immigration policies, the last of which is one that arouses a lot of controversy.

The Liberal Democrats promised to cut tuition fees and provide free health care for the elderly, to be compensated by higher tax rate for earnings above 100,000 Pounds a year.

However, Iraq did emerge again just a week prior to the election date, centered around the legitimacy of Tony Blair taking Britain into war in Iraq. Considering how much importance the public gave to this issue according to the polls, this might have seemed futile. However, what’s at stake here is not Iraq, but an attack on Blair’s trustworthiness.

Both the Tories and the Liberal Democrats did make significant advances at the cost of Labour’s lost seats. The Tories won back a significant number of parliamentary seats at 197, it’s highest since 1997, with Michael Howard declaring it a big step towards the party’s recovery. However, despite that he has announced his intention to resign as the party leader before the next election.

Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrats party leader, ended up with more Commons seats than at any time for his party since the 1920s, with a total of 62 seats, up by 10 seats since the last elections in 2001. This is a solid result towards his aim of establishing his party as a significant real opposition for the next election. In fact according to various pollsters Charles Kennedy is the most popular party leader.

The drastically reduced majority in parliament for Labour means Tony Blair will have a much more difficult time getting his policies through Parliament, adding more pressure to his long term fate of remaining in office for the full term as he intends.

With declining Blair popularity, both within the public and amongst his own MPs, the question now becomes how long can he remain in office before stepping down and handing over to the more popular Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown. At this point it is believed that Blair will go sooner rather than later.

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