Posted on 06/01/2003 5:57:41 AM PDT by may18
By Toby Helm, Chief Political Correspondent (Filed: 30/05/2003)
The first signs of a solidly-based Tory recovery for a decade are revealed today in an opinion poll that shows a collapse of trust in Tony Blair is beginning to hurt Labour.
A YouGov survey for The Telegraph puts the Conservatives just one point behind Labour, their highest poll rating since 1992 apart from a blip during the fuel crisis in the autumn of 2000.
The results are a further shot in the arm for Iain Duncan Smith four weeks after the Conservatives gained 561 council seats to become the largest party in local government in England. Tory strategists insisted last night that they still had much to do but claimed that policies on university funding, taxation and Europe were striking a chord with voters.
For the first time since Mr Duncan Smith became leader in September 2001, more voters - 19 per cent - believe he would be a better prime minister than the 15 per cent who back Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader.
Click to enlarge The Tories also lie just one point behind Labour on the issue of economic competence, one of Labour's strongest cards at the 2001 general election. The findings will cause alarm in Labour ranks at a time when Mr Blair is under pressure from his backbenchers and the party rank and file to explain why no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.
The YouGov survey puts Labour on 37 per cent, down three points, the Conservatives on 36 per cent, up four per cent, and the Liberal Democrats on 20 per cent, down one per cent.
A month ago, when the Government was enjoying a post-war rise in popularity - the so-called "Baghdad bounce" - the gap between Labour and Conservatives was eight points.
The Tories' recent pledge to abolish student tuition fees appears to be having a positive influence. Their proposals stand in contrast to Labour's plans to allow universities to charge up to £3,000 a year for courses.
Although 52 per cent of voters agreed that universities are "chronically underfunded", 43 per cent said they were "more sympathetic to the Conservatives" after their promise to scrap tuition fees. Among parents and students the figure was 53 per cent.
Even more worrying for Mr Blair is the dramatic fall in trust in his Government.
Just 29 per cent think that, on balance, the Government has been honest and trustworthy - almost half the level, 56 per cent, of the 2001 election. On the other hand, 62 per cent said it was not honest - more than double the 2001 level.
Mr Blair's personal ratings are also suffering - 38 per cent now think he would make the best prime minister, down five per cent on April and 14 per cent on 2001.
Strategists believe Labour's splits over the euro are harming the party in the same way that divisions dented Tory popularity during the later years of John Major's premiership.
Labour officials point out that the party is, in historical terms, still in a remarkably strong mid-term position. Most governing parties languish well behind the Opposition in mid-term. To maintain the momentum, Mr Duncan Smith is planning a major speech - entitled New Europe: Old Europe - next month in which he will outline his thinking on Britain's relations with the EU and Europe's relationship with America.
One aide to Mr Duncan Smith said the party was finally getting its ideas across. He said: "It's one thing to have the policies, quite another to communicate them. We are beginning to do that."
You are sure slapping yourself on the back before you have any facts to support your conspiracy theories.
Exactly. Certain philosophical ideas are timeless. Those who say that the founders' opinions on foreign policy are "outmoded" are similar to those liberals who advocate a "living constitution".
That translates into: "I have some ulterior motive and/or un-American political agenda which can only be achieved by undermining the philosophical principles of the Founders"
I'm American born and bred....and a lifelong conservative (including 13 years as an officer in the USAF). My grandparents were from Montreal...I adopted the handle off- the-cuff, and have had considerable grief since then as a result.
You know, if it was really because of the war, one would not expect the Tories to be gaining.
It would be the Liberal Democrats.
Since the Tories - who supported the war - are gaining, it must be something else.
How can all of the evidence be regarded as a subterfuge or lies by numerous government and other credible people or organizations? If so many people are involved in such a subterfuge, would'nt it soon be proven wrong by a whistle blower?
Are you saying, with the RATS every day, that Bush, Powell, Condi and many others are all lying? That's a major stretch and you are all wrong. As Limbaugh said today, you can hide WMD in envelopes or small vials and produce a whole lot of dead people with miniscule amounts of WMD.
Wolfowitz did not such thing, and the partial quote, taken out of context, from the Vanity Fair article has already been debunked as just that.
Moreover, in order to actually believe that Pres Bush and the rest of the U.S. government lied about the belief that Iraq had WMD, you have to believe that the British, Russian, German and U.S. intelligence agencies all lied about it; that the U.N. lied about Iraq having WMDs when the inspectors left in 1998; that Clinton lied about it when he bombed Iraq in 1998; that Sadam's son-in-law lied about it when he defected (later to stupidly return to Iraq and be killed; that Iraq lied about its own WMD in 1999 after the son-in-law defected and made his statements.
On top of that massive conspiracy, you have to believe that despite not having WMD, Saddam tried his best to make us believe he had WMD by not complying with the Cease Fire agreement or UN Resolutions.
Then you have to believe one of the conspiracy theories for going to war - either that it was for oil (which makes no sense, as oil prices will go down w/ Iraq back on the mkt - moreover why didn't we take the oil in 1991?); or that the war was for haliburton.
Then you have to believe that Iraq did not have time, in the 14 months leading up to the war, to hide or move the WMD. Then you have to believe that we have searched everywhere, when in fact we have only searched 100 out of 1000 potential sites.
In the end, you have to basically believe that everyone is involved in this massive conspiracy but yourself. And, you are right. And boy, are we having a good laugh at your expense.
In the end, even if it turns out that WMD did not exist, that does not mean that the President and U.S. government were not acting on the best available informatoin they had in good faith.
Believe it or not, just b/c you may have disagreed with the war does not make everyone that disagrees with you evil or trying to hide something. Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar, and not a conspiracy.
Great minds think alike.
If I were a Brit, I'd be a Tory, so I don't mind this turn of events. But Blair was a courageous leader in doing the right thing despite the polls and I hate to see the left in his own party trying to bring him down. They'll bring down what had been an unassailable majority with Blair, but I'm resigned to watching lefty politicians do stupid things in both the US and Britain.
Again, I have no first-hand knowledge. I have heard numerous speculations:
1) Washington wants to control the price of world oil (both to give DC better ability to modulate the US economy, and as a threat to other oil-producing nations to cooperate with us or face a price collapse).
2) Iraq switched its oil accounts from dollars to euros a year or so ago. This was a blow to the status of the dollar as the world reserve currency which, if emulated by other OPEC nations, would have severe negative economic consequences for the US economy.
3) It was an attempt at radical Reconstruction of the Middle East, similar to the South after the Civil War. One theory states that terrorism is endemic to the Middle East, and the only ultimate way to end it is to essentially invade and conquer the entire region, and then give them mass doses of US pop culture to transform them into clones of American consumerist sheep.
4) It was an attempt to show the Arab world just what we are capable of. The US couldn't allow the 9/11 attacks to go unanswered...we had to kick Arab butt...and Saddam was the most convenient target around.
5) And last, but not least, there is the ever-present theory that the Likudniks in American precipitated the war to shape a more secure environment in the Middle East for Israel.
Take your pick. But as I said, the only thing that I am fairly certain of is that the stated reasons (WMD and links to Osama) were BS.
"In order to believe that Pres Bush and the rest of the US govt lied about the belief that the Iraqi govt had WMD..."
I didn't say that Bush lied. I am giving him the benefit of the doubt. I suspect that he was given slanted intelligence from his courtiers who wanted the invasion to occur regardless of the presence of WMDs in Iraq.
"In the end, even if it turns out that WMD did not exist,that does not mean that the president was not acting on the best available information in good faith"
As stated above, I believe that it is possible that the pres was acting on the advice that he was given. I'm afraid that you may not appreciate the extent to which "face time" with the president is a politicized process. Tenet's CIA was overtly pressured by various elements in the administration to alter its intel reports to the president. With minimal searching, if you so desire, I could pass along a couple of interesting articles making this claim.
But still, no matter how you wish to slice it, two facts remain:
1) We were told that Iraq was awash in tons of toxins and gases that could be used against us at any time. None have shown up anywhere in Iraq after nearly 2 months of searching. (and, by the way, the Iraqi scientists are mostly saying under interrogation that Iraq destroyed its WMD in the 90s. As to why Saddam then did what he did...how the heck should I know?)
2) We were told that there were extensive contacts between the Iraqi govt and Osama's terrorist organization. Again, this has turned out to be bogus.
Aren't you just a teensie bit curious about these facts?
Again, you don't answer my point. 1) every other western government conceded that they believed Iraq had WMD - they simply did not agree with our method of dealing with it. Were the same conspirators at work in those governments and those government's intelligence agencies? 2) even the U.S. Democrats conceded that Iraq had WMD - are they also involved in the conspiracy? 3) the UN believed according to reports and statements from 1998, that Iraq had WMD. Was the UN also involved in the conspiracy?
As saddam apparently wanted us to believe he had WMDs, and even you seem to be admitting that he did at some time in the recent past have them, is it not reasonable for our intelligence to believe he still had them? At best, you are arguing for an intelligence failure, not some kind of conspiracy.
2) We were told that there were extensive contacts between the Iraqi govt and Osama's terrorist organization. Again, this has turned out to be bogus.
Please cite me where the U.S. gov't stated there were "extensive contacts between the Iraqi govt and Osama's terrorist org." I don't believe that is the case. In fact, I believe the administration was pretty careful not to state this. However, direct links to Al Queda have in fact been found - an Al Queda "executive" was living in Iraq, a top Iraqi official met w/ Al Queda as recently as 2000.
In short, your "facts" are the only thing that is bogus. If, in fact, WMD are never found, which I suspect won't be the case, but believe we need to wait until all the sites are inspected, then I will want questions answered regarding what would be a large intelligence failure, not a conspiracy. However, intelligence is at best an art, not a science. Intelligence will never be perfect, and we can't expect it to be.
I'm sure you can point me to many interesting articles regarding the "truth" about the grand conspiracy. And, I'm sure those articles will contain as much fact and reason as your above posts. And, of course a President's time is hard to come by and is rationed out. How could it possibly work otherwise? Anyone who wants can just walk in?
I think #3 and #4 may be plausible in some sense.
More likely we must face the probability that, as Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair, there were multiple reasons.
The euro move did indeed hurt, but I can't imagine even Wolfowitz plumping for a wat just to remedy that. I think the oil market pluses were just fringe bennies, to be honest.
For now, we must face the reality that we still do not know what happened to Saddam's stockpiles - stocks we know existed in some significant form at one time. I find it difficult to believe that all he had were a few half empty drums and empty mobile bio lab trucks lying around, because he ended up paying a very high price to hide something that did not exist.
It will be embarrassing for the administration and Blair if we end up unable to produce such explanations for the WMD's. But there is also no question but that the removal of Saddam from power was a good thing.
Depressing though the prospect might be, I would far rather the Arabs end up becoming consumerist sheep than sitting unemployed around the madrassas all day hatching plans for killing us in mass quantities.
In the old days we would have done far worse.
Perhaps we must define "extensive" here, but the documents that the Daily Telegraph uncovered in Baghdad suggested more than just an arms-length relationship.
There's no question that Saddam was one of the world's premier state supporters of terror groups. What we must remember, however, is that Iran and Syria have even more repulsive records.
There is a lot of work remaining to be done.
Yeah, but vote once and accept the results, or vote until they vote for it? I think the Tory policy might be a little disengenuous.
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