Tony Blair, I AM YOUR FATHER. --Karl Rove
(According to the British press.)
Posted on 05/06/2005 1:11:41 AM PDT by Duff
How long can he cling to power? by BENEDICT BROGAN, Daily Mail
06:25am 6th May 2005 A disheartened Tony Blair was left with his position in sudden doubt early today following the spectacular collapse of his political support. With his majority slashed, questions were being asked about his ability to deliver on his pledge to serve a full term before handing over to his successor.
It leaves Gordon Brown facing the nightmare scenario of inheriting a party in crisis, with its power-base diminished and its support among voters on the slide.
The Chancellor must now contemplate the prospect of taking over a poison chalice from Mr Blair that could dash his hopes of winning a fourth term for Labour - especially as a string of analysts are warning the economy could be bound for rockier waters.
Shattering blow
The scale of Labour losses has dealt a shattering blow to Mr Blair's authority that will make it difficult for him to navigate the challenges piling up in a third term.
He was said to be shocked by both the scale of the hostility against him by voters and the mounting evidence that trust in him has all but evaporated. Until yesterday the Prime Minister had insisted that there was no urgency about his plan to stand down at the end of this Parliament.
He believed he would be able to stay on at Number 10 until just months before the next election, when he would stand aside in favour of the Chancellor.
But at Westminster last night it was clear that the result has left him facing an immediate political and personal crisis.
The loss of nearly two-thirds of his majority, and a result that saw Labour win the support of barely one in four voters, means that calls for him to go much sooner than he planned are bound to multiply among his MPs.
Blair is a liability
Those who saw their majorities slashed last night will be anxious to ditch the pilot who has sailed Labour so close to the political reefs while there is time to salvage the situation.
They will now be certain that Mr Blair is a liability whose personal failings cast a shadow over what they thought was their best sellingpoint - Labour's strong economic performance.
With the Premier's unpopularity at record levels both among the public and - more crucially - among his own MPs, he will find it difficult to assert his authority.
His party critics will say that he squandered Labour's biggest asset - its thumping majority - by pursuing an unpopular and illegal war in Iraq.
An immediate concern will be managing party business at Westminster, where Labour can no longer afford to tolerate the kind of massive rebellions that marked Mr Blair's second term.
Supporters of the Chancellor are likely to be enraged at the prospect of inheriting a political machine that has suffered such a battering at the polls.
They will be anxious for Mr Brown to take over the reins as soon as possible to try to repair the damage done to the party's standing by Mr Blair.
The scale of the pounding suffered by Labour makes a mockery of the Blair-Brown alliance that was paraded before the cameras day after day during the campaign.
Party activists were told that the Chancellor's close involvement in the campaign would help to counter the criticisms that have sapped the Government over the past four years.
Mr Blair's supporters, in turn, will say that calling in Mr Brown to act as the Prime Minister's 'human shield', and the decision to focus on his achievements as steward of the economy, failed to stave off a haemorrhage of votes.
Fresh fighting
Westminster will now brace itself for a fresh outburst of infighting between the Chancellor and the Prime Minister's allies as both sides try to blame each other for the result.
As a lame duck Prime Minister Mr Blair will also find his authority on the international stage severely dented. In less than two months he takes over the presidency of the European Union and will be expected to navigate the crisis engulfing the EU over the European constitution.
If France and the Netherlands vote to approve the European constitution, Mr Blair will have to fight a referendum campaign with his standing in his party at rock bottom.
And if, as predicted Labour's majority drops to below 70, party business managers will have a hard time getting through a raft of contentious bills expected in the next Parliament - in particular compulsory ID cards, pensions reform and the future of nuclear power.
It was hard enough for Mr Blair to ram his modernising policies on to the statute book even with his previous Commons majority of 161.
The Government came close to defeat on the Iraq war, foundation hospitals, student tuition fees and anti-terrorism laws.
In Mr Blair's first term, between 1997 and 2001, there were no fewer than 96 Commons revolts.
Now his headaches look like getting worse. The Left will see Mr Blair's difficulties as an incentive to cause trouble and there are about 40 MPs who are completely irreconcilable to the New Labour.
The Premier will now be reliant on the support of figures such as Jeremy Corbyn, who voted against the Labour whip no fewer than 148 times in the last Parliament.
What lies has he told?
I can tell you the biggest whopper he told - he promised in 1997 that taxes wouldn't be higher under Labour. Since they were elected, we've had 66 separate tax rises - albeit they were not rises in income tax (they were rises in petrol tax, National Insurance contributions, etc.)
Regards, Ivan
I see. Taxes seem to be restricting GB's growth, which in turn hurts everything else. It doesn't sound good for Tony.
I watched Blair on C-SPAN tonight.
For the leader of a winning party, he sure didn't look like a happy camper.
Maybe he should ask Steyn for some advice!
The main thrust of the Tony Blair is a liar slur, both from the conservatives and the loonie left and their islamic allies is that he lied about WMD in order to join the United States in the Iraq war.
I cannot help it, but I am happy to see him win a third term, and I think the fact that he did win a historic third term is being underplayed by the media. The seats he lost are seats Labour only won because of Tony's leadership. I view this kind of like a team loosing 2-0 i the second leg of a champions league tie, after having secured a 4-0 win in the first leg. BTW: Go Liverpool in Istanbul :-)
And MadIvan... I did a google search on Brown and found an article that claimed that Brown was even more pro-American than Blair.. What is that all about? Hogwash?
Cheers.
Cheers.
I am very happy that Tony Blair was reelected. I believe that the best thing for "labor" is to encourage industry. If Tony Blair figures out how to stop outsourcing and offshoring, maybe he can help America, too. About the taxes: if he and President Bush could both learn to spend less (on anything but the wars), maybe they could back off on them.
I do suspect that Churchillian sacrifices are ahead for western countries as they shoulder up and pay for the wars. Iran and the DPRK aren't going away, either. And ramping up technologically to counter China is going to cost us as well. Taxes are a fact of life in a world war, and this really is a world war.
It is hard to understand the numbers. Although Labour's majority declined by 10%, they still have twice as many MP's as the Torries. Hastert and Frist would think they died and went to heaven with margins like this. I saw Gordon Brown last night for the first time and he may be popular, now, but he is no Tony Blair. He seemed patently insincere.
Tony Blair, I AM YOUR FATHER. --Karl Rove
(According to the British press.)
I wouldn't describe Brown as more pro-American than Blair. What is certainly true is that Brown is more anti-EU than Blair.
Regards, Ivan
It's the free market. Two solutions:
--Lower wages to be competitive with those paid elsewhere.
--Make labour and products from America and the UK better in some way than elsewhere, whether more creative, more productive, more obsequious, higher quality, etc.
All else is just building dikes against the tide.
That is only one lie it may seem to those outside Britain that is the main slur but I can assure you there have been so many that in a lot of people's mind is not that high up the list.
Here are some more examples
Labour pledge ‘Your country’s borders protected.’ We’ve heard it all before. In 1997, Mr Blair promised to establish a ‘swift and fair’1 asylum system but asylum applications have doubled under Labour and there are over 250,000 failed asylum seekers living in Britain
Labour pledge ‘Your community safer’. In 1994, Mr Blair promised to be ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ but there are a million violent crimes a year and a gun crime every hour
Labour pledge ‘Your family better off’. In 1995, Mr Blair promised he had ‘no plans to raise tax at all’ 3 but he’s put them up 66 times. Under Mr Blair, tax has gone up by £5,000 per household in the UK
Labour pledge ‘Your family treated better and faster’. In 1997, Mr Blair promised to ‘save our National Health Service’ ,but each year 5,000 people are dying from infections they picked up in hospital; there are still over one million people on waiting lists; and people are waiting for longer Labour pledge ‘Your child achieving more’. In 1997, Mr Blair promised that education would be his priority, but a teacher is assaulted every seven minutes and one in three children leaves primary school unable to write properly
Labour pledge ‘Your children with the best start’. In 1994 Mr Blair said ‘childcare is a prime example where active help is needed’ but childcare in Britain is the most expensive in Europe and the number of childminders in England has fallen by 25,000 under Mr Blair
I'm not convinced. I think this is defeatist. It also underestimates the fact that democracies can go to war with one another. I find it prepostrous that current thinking suggests that all "free countries" will never find it convenient to fight each other. It's sheer naivete.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding. Are you saying the UK or the US should attack countries that won't raise their prices?!?
What sales pitch do you use to convince, say, a German to buy something from the UK or the US at 10x the price of something from India, for example, unless there is something that makes the UK/US product or worker superior?
No, I'm not an economist but I know defeatism when I see it.
No, it's called reality. If you don't come up with a way to make yourself or your product more valuable than someone willing to sell it for less, don't be surprised when your wages fall or you lose your job.
Defeatism would be if you didn't look at the solutions--which are to increase our personal competitiveness, or to be the owners of corporations that use lower-cost labour to achieve competitiveness. Simply being lower-productivity and lower-quality and expecting same wages is propping up an unsustainable model.
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