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When, after a great victory, a Roman general marched in triumph surrounded by plunder, captives, and, quite probably, hot chicks, he was always accompanied by a slave whose job was to hiss periodically in the great mans ear the irritating reminder that he was only human, not a god. Something a bit like this (well, I dont know about the plunder, captives, and hot chicks) happened to Tony Blair in the aftermath of his partys triumph in the recent British elections. Within hours of victory, numerous Labor politicians lined up to tell Blair to get lost. Former foreign minister Robin Cook took time out from his usual bilious routine to report on the views of the nations boulevardiers. Anyone on the streets knows we were not elected because Tony Blair was popular.... Another former, a former health minister better known for the elections he has lost than those he has won, said it was time for Blair to go. Former actress and current hysteric, the shrilly leftist MP Glenda Jackson chimed in with the claim that the people have screamed at the top of their lungs. And their message is clear. They want Tony Blair gone.
Well, Glenda, in case you werent paying attention, the people have just made Tony Blair the first Labor prime minister to win three consecutive election victories. While the partys parliamentary majority was substantially reduced, it remains, well, substantial.
To the novelist and journalist Robert Harris (an old friend of Blairs Svengali, Peter Mandelson, but a clear-eyed judge of British politics nonetheless), this all looked like madness: it does not require a political genius to see that it is a thoroughly bad idea for a minority party-cabal to bring down an elected prime minister. The Liberals did it to Asquith in 1915 and have never gained power again. The Tories did it to Thatcher and have since suffered three successive election defeats Now Labor, like a chimp examining a loaded revolver, shows alarming signs of the same casual attitude to its political extinction. Harris noted that an opinion poll conducted shortly after the election had shown some 83 percent of those who had voted Labor said that Tony Blair should stay on for at least another twelve months.
The same poll, however, revealed that over 60 percent of Labor voters want Blair out within three years, an indication, perhaps, that all is not rosy for Tony. And its not. Take a closer look at the stats: the Labor partys share of the vote, a dodgy postal ballot or two over 35 percent, was the lowest enjoyed by an incoming government for nearly 200 years, and impressive as Labors haul of parliamentary seats undoubtedly was, it came in at well below the total secured in the previous two general elections. The number of votes cast for the party has slumped by a third since the 1997 election that swept Blair into power. For the first time in a decade, many Labor MPs are sweaty, anxious, and paranoid about their parliamentary futures, something that bodes ill for Blairs.
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