Blair Is Trying for New Spark Among Voters (Labor's lead over Conservatives down to 2 points)

LONDON, March 18 - Prime Minister Tony Blair went on daytime television recently, seeking to lure voters back to his Labor Party for elections that are expected in early May. What he found, though, was that some Britons at least have begun to question his leadership, entertaining the once unthinkable prospect of life without him.

Marion Baxter, a nurse, asked him, point blank, if he would be prepared to clean patients' backsides for $9 an hour. On another issue, Maria Hutchings, a homemaker, advanced on him across the studio, proclaiming, "That's rubbish, Tony." Debra Kroll, a midwife, told him, "We asked you not to go to war," and demanded an apology for invading Iraq. (He did not give one.)

Buoyant and seemingly invincible, Mr. Blair swept to power in 1997 vowing to "rebrand" Britain. But lately, his star has fallen as he has thrashed through one political thicket after another, from the highly unpopular war in Iraq to nitty-gritty issues like the number of hospital beds for surgery and failing schools.

Few people here think that Mr. Blair and Labor are headed for defeat in the end. Indeed, after the death of Yasir Arafat and the successful election in Iraq, Mr. Blair, like President Bush, is hoping to capitalize on the stirrings of peace and transformation across the Middle East to rebuild his image.

But to set the groundwork for a successful third term and to forestall a challenge from his longtime Labor rival, Gordon Brown, Mr. Blair needs not just to win, but to win convincingly. And to accomplish that, he needs to woo back the growing numbers of voters who are no longer impressed with his performance.

In simplest terms, Mr. Blair and the British electorate just are not getting along the way they used to, a fact he acknowledged recently.

"All of a sudden," he told a Labor party conference in February, "there you are, the British people thinking, 'You're not listening.' And I think, 'You're not hearing me.' "

"And before you know it, you raise your voice; I raise mine," he continued. "Some of you throw a bit of crockery. And now you the British people have to sit down and decide whether you want the relationship to continue."

Mr. Blair's marital metaphor was shrewdly chosen, reflecting his dwindling appeal to women - once a mainstay of electoral support - who seem to have developed the greatest resistance to his considerable charms.

The Labor Party's lead over the opposition Conservatives in the most recent survey by the MORI Institute dwindled to as low as 2 points in late February from up to 10 points last October. A majority of women, in one poll, said they mistrusted him.

Worse yet, after a series of parliamentary battles and political missteps by his advisers, the most basic of political calculations in Britain may be shifting away from the view that Labor is simply unassailable.

"No one expects to lose this election," the columnist Polly Toynbee wrote in the left-leaning Guardian, referring to Mr. Blair's Labor supporters, "but for the first time they can imagine it."

That showed just how far Mr. Blair has fallen, Icarus-like, from 1997, when he led his party in to power after 18 years in opposition. In 2001, he was re-elected in yet another landslide victory. But since then, the invasion of Iraq and growing disenchantment with Labor's inability to deliver on its lofty promises to overhaul the schools and national health service have opened a deep seam of disillusion and enduring questions about his leadership.

Undoubtedly, the war in Iraq has inflicted the deepest political wounds. Having based his foreign policy on a steadfast alliance with the United States, he shared Mr. Bush's publicly stated convictions about the need to disarm Saddam Hussein, insisting that Iraq had prohibited weapons that presented a "serious and current" threat. When those failed to turn up after the war, his credibility was widely questioned - particularly by his own constituents, who largely opposed the war to begin with.

"It's fairly clear that a considerable number of people turned against the government because of the war, and a large proportion of them have remained hostile," said Anthony King, a professor of government at Essex University. Even before the war, he recalled, Mr. Blair's government had been "found guilty of spin and double-accounting."

At the same time, Labor's once-invincible electoral machine seems to have been weakened, if only temporarily, by internal feuding, particularly between Mr. Blair and Mr. Brown, just as the opposition Conservatives have begun to show an unusual self-confidence under their leader, Michael Howard.

"Michael Howard genuinely thinks he might win the next election," wrote Piers Morgan, a former Daily Mirror editor. "And what's even more extraordinary is that I am beginning to agree with him."

All that may simply be pre-election hyperbole, particularly since the Conservatives echoed Mr. Blair's support for the war. In Britain's constituency-based electoral system, the Conservatives would need a swing toward them of unheard-of proportions to prevail.

Mr. Blair may also be suffering from a familiar voter weariness afflicting politicians, like him, with two full terms under their belt and a third in prospect.

But there are signs, as Mr. Howard, the opposition leader, suggested the other day, that Labor is getting "rattled" by the upset in its fortunes and that Mr. Blair is looking to soften his image.

The prime minister has sought to sidestep the traditional media - seen by his aides as unremittingly hostile - in favor of a series of carefully aimed public appearances and interviews intended to reach potential voters outside the traditional political loop. Nowhere is that more evident than in his attempts to win back support among women voters.

On several occasions in recent weeks, he has gone on daytime television chat shows, where he has been exposed to the wrath of women enraged by his policies. The bluntness of their criticisms suggests that whatever deference Mr. Blair ever claimed has long fallen away.

His aides call it the masochism strategy, intended to draw out dissent long before polling day. His critics call it just plain masochism of a kind hard to imagine in the politics of most of Europe or the United States.

In a rock magazine, Mr. Blair acknowledged doing Mick Jagger imitations for a band called Ugly Rumors. His daytime television appearances also seem intended to show that he is not the aloof, presidential figure his critics depict him to be. "By soaking up the anger, he calculates he may drain it," the columnist Andrew Rawnsley wrote in the weekly Observer.

For Mr. Blair, the political challenges extend beyond the traditional effort against the Conservatives and the smaller Liberal Democratic Party to his longstanding rivalry with Mr. Brown, who many voters believe would make a more capable prime minister.

In a Daily Telegraph poll, 63 percent of voters said they viewed Mr. Brown as an asset for Labor, compared with only 34 percent for Mr. Blair. When asked who was doing the better job, more than half chose Mr. Brown, who as finance minister receives credit for a strong economy, while only 17 percent were for Mr. Blair.

Indeed, Mr. Blair is said to have promised Mr. Brown more than a decade ago that he would, at some stage, cede the premiership to him. But according to the most recent published accounts, he broke that promise last year and said he would serve a third term if he won the coming election.

The electoral calculation, thus, goes something like this: If Mr. Blair's majority of around 160 in the 659-seat House of Commons is significantly weakened by the vote on May 5, Mr. Brown's case for taking over during Labor's expected third term will be strengthened. If Mr. Blair secures another huge margin as he did in 1997 and 2001, then his authority will be cemented.

"The general expectation is a reduced Labor majority with a low turnout in the election," said Clare Short, a former Labor minister who broke with Mr. Blair over the Iraq war. "The question is how much will the majority be reduced."

With respect, I disagree that the European issues take significant numbers of votes away from Blair. The people who feel strongly about UK sovereignty were never going to vote for him but always for the Tories or latterly for the UKIP.

The people whose support he's losing fall into two main camps. Old Labour party activists, because they thought they were getting a socialist prime minister and Blair, whatever his failings is hardly that. He's also being deserted by at least some of his core supporters in the population, e.g. housewives, and that's his biggest worry. The two main reasons why he's losing them are a strong feeling that he deliberately lied to get us into the Iraq war, which a significant number of the population now thinks wasn't in our national interest, and a failure to deliver more than PR spin, on the quasi-socialist promises, particularly about bringing the health service, education, public transport back up to scratch, which got him into office originally.

Mr Howard isn't stupid, and he knows his best chance of getting elected in May is to be realistic about what Blair's problems are and to exploit them to their fullest potential.

some FR topics related to what bernie_g is saying, chrono order:

BNP takes Essex council seat
The Gruniad | Friday September 5, 2003 | Matthew Tempest and agencies
Posted on 09/05/2003 2:06:49 PM PDT by ijcr
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/976891/posts

Blair, Labour Suffer Huge By-Election Defeat
The Daily Telegraph | Sept. 19, 2003 | George Jones Political Editor
Posted on 09/18/2003 9:04:59 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/985330/posts

Muslim bloc vote 'a turning point in British politics'
London Telegraph | 9/20/03 | London Telegraph
Posted on 09/20/2003 2:03:18 AM PDT by ambrose
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/986104/posts

Labour faces 'Muslim backlash'
Independent | September 21, 2003 | Severin Carrell
Posted on 09/20/2003 2:14:18 PM PDT by sarcasm
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/986330/posts

Meet Red Kennedy
[what happens if Lib Dems take over Britain - VERY SCARY]
[what if Conan O'Brien headed a UK political party]
The Sun | September 23, 2003 | The Sun
Posted on 09/23/2003 3:58:32 AM PDT by ejdrapes
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/987580/posts

Blair faces motion at conference to resign (Labour's Loony Left aLert!)
The Independent | September 24, 2003 | Andrew Grice
Posted on 09/23/2003 10:08:05 PM PDT by Timesink
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/988188/posts

Blair, Under Attack, May Win as U.K. Economy Grows
Bloomberg | 09/29/03 | BG
Posted on 09/29/2003 10:28:52 AM PDT by Pikamax
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/991589/posts

British Tories back in the lead.
The Daily Telegraph | 28 November 2003
Posted on 11/28/2003 2:55:39 AM PST by tjwmason
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1030190/posts

Blair plans snap election in February
The Telegraph | 10/31/04 | Patrick Hennessy
Posted on 10/30/2004 4:42:00 PM PDT by conservative in nyc
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1263108/posts

[snip] Tony Blair has ordered his closest aides to draw up plans for a snap general election to be held in February, The Telegraph has learnt.

Alan Milburn, Labour's new head of election strategy, has been told to launch a television and poster advertising blitz in the New Year and to put the party on a war footing under the campaign slogan "Britain Is Working".

The plan will cause surprise at Westminster because all sides have, until now, been preparing for an election on May 5. Cherie Blair appeared to let the date slip in a speech this month to the Cheltenham Literature Festival when she said that charity receptions at Downing Street were "fully booked until May 2005". [unsnip]

UK: Howard accepts Blair terror deal
BBC | Friday, 11 March, 2005, 18:11 GMT | staff
Posted on 03/11/2005 10:35:53 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1360910/posts

Don't make abortion an election issue - (Tony)Blair
Scotsman | FRASER NELSON
Posted on 03/16/2005 6:25:35 PM PST by nickcarraway
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1364397/posts

Being a Tory gets easier by the minute
by Ed Vaizey
Sunday August 24, 2003
The Conservative Party conference in Blackpool in early October should go some way to answer the poser... By the time conference comes around, Iain Duncan Smith will have been Tory leader for just over two years. Duncan Smith is credited by his party with reconnecting the Conservatives with the public's agenda, something that they failed to do in 2001. As one strategist puts it, 'we are now starting to have policies on the issues that keep people awake at night'. Such issues do not include Europe, a subject where Duncan Smith has succeeded in turning down the volume. They do include, though, schools, hospitals and crime... Without having to look at a crib sheet, I can tell you that the Conservatives would abolish tuition fees, make exam bodies independent, put 40,000 more policemen on the street over the next decade, fund 20,000 more drug rehabilitation places, introduce a health passport and tackle the issue of funded pensions with a long-term savings plan... Better still, Government errors are seized on with a little more alacrity. Peter Hain's recent musings on the need to impose even higher taxes on middle-income earners was like the whiff of grapeshot to old Tory dogs. The new-found enthusiasm took me back to the hunger the Tories felt in the 1992 election campaign... A million more people now pay higher rate income tax, and average income families now face the prospect for the first time of an inheritance tax bill, because of rising property prices. The Tory mantra is likely to be that real reform, not higher taxes, means better public services. And better public services can therefore exist with lower taxes.

Everyone, have a great day. I'm going to get something done the rest of it.

Pensions crisis gives Tories 14-point lead among older women
by Ben Russell
24 March 2005
Labour's support among older women has slumped since 1997, with fewer than one in five believing the party has done enough to tackle the pensions crisis, a poll has revealed. Only 18 per cent of women over 55 believe Tony Blair is doing enough to address the pensions crisis, shows the study for Age Concern, which gave the Conservatives a 14-point lead over Labour in a crucial sector of the electorate. Yesterday's poll, by ICM for Age Concern and the Fawcett Society, showed 42 per cent of women over 55 said they would vote Conservative, compared to 29 per cent for Labour and 21 per cent for the Liberal Democrats. But 19 per cent were undecided, creating a large bloc of "silver swinger" voters up for grabs. In 1997, 40 per cent of women over 55 backed Labour... The Age Concern report said: "There is an army of 8.8 million voters guaranteed to turn out at the ballot box, but have not decided which box to cross when they get there. They are disillusioned and disappointed by the Labour government, which many of them saw into power in 1997 and 2001 and are searching for a party to deliver on the issues that matter most to them."
Kennedy criticises 'unfair' taxes
BBC
Wednesday, 16 March, 2005
Gordon Brown has failed to tackle the "fundamental unfairness" in the tax system in his ninth Budget, Charles Kennedy has said. How was it right that the poorest 20% of society were still paying more as a proportion of their income than the richest 20%, the Lib Dem leader asked... Speaking in the Commons after Mr Brown had delivered what is widely thought to be the last Budget before the general election, Mr Kennedy acknowledged that the UK was one of the most successful economies in the world... The Lib Dem plan for a local income tax would benefit the typical household by more than £450 a year, with half of all pensioners paying no local tax and about three million being better off... Mr Kennedy added his party's priorities of free long-term care for the elderly, abolishing top-up fees and replacing the council tax would be funded by charging 50% income tax to those earning more than £100,000 per annum.
Lib Dem vote will hit Tories
by Sandy Walkington
Lib Dem director of general election communications
The Guardian
Thursday March 24, 2005
In Brent East and Leicester South former Labour voters saw through their party's claim that voting Lib Dem "would let the Conservatives win". It will happen on a wider scale in the forthcoming poll. ['Civ: After Brent East elected a Liberal Democrat over the Labour incumbent and the Tory challenger, the pro-Labour editorial said that it was good news for Labour because it meant no Conservative victory in the next national election -- a nutty conclusion, since the district was previously solid for Labour, not for the Tories. The pro-Blair editorial said that it was good news because a Liberal Democrat beat a conservative in the middle 1980s, seeming to indicate a turning away from the Tory gov't, but then lost by 10,000 votes. The Liberal Democrats are not going to bewitch away potential Tory voters; if anything, Labour will lose ground and the LDs will pick it up.]
Behind in polls, but Tories eager for election fight
by George Jones
Political Editor
Telegraph
March 24, 2005
When John Prescott, standing in for Tony Blair at Prime Minister's questions yesterday, virtually confirmed the general election would be on May 5, he was greeted by enthusiastic cheers from Conservative MPs... The Tories are surprisingly upbeat even though the conventional view - based largely on opinion polls - is that Labour is on course for a third successive victory. The Conservatives have a mountain to climb. Mr Blair has the cushion of a 160-plus Commons majority and there is a strong bias in the electoral system towards Labour. The economic fundamentals are in the Government's favour - low inflation, unemployment and mortgage rates... Lord Gould, Mr Blair's polling guru, told Labour campaign managers this week that Labour had increased its lead over the Tories despite the high-profile campaign conducted by Michael Howard on issues such as asylum and immigration, dirty hospitals and illegal traveller camps... Lord Gould said Labour's private poll gave it a nine-point lead compared to seven points last November. The Liberal Democrats were being squeezed by the fierce battle between the main parties. Labour was on 36 per cent (up three), the Conservatives on 27 (up one) and the Liberal Democrats on 16 (down six). A separate ICM poll this week suggested that last week's Budget had halted a Tory revival in its tracks. It put Labour on 40 per cent - eight points ahead of the Tories - while a poll of polls average since January put Labour on 39, the Conservatives on 33 and the Lib Dems on 19.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.