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Tony Blair's Close Call LONDON--Americans see British Prime Minister Tony Blair as a true-blue friend. He has worked closely with President Bush on the war on terrorism, and Britain was the only major U.S. ally to fight in the Iraq war. But American gratitude isn't exactly a vote getter for the beleaguered Blair. The war and Blair's Bush connection--both hugely unpopular here--are putting his Labor Party at risk in this week's election. Blair is expected to win. But polls are jumping around so much that two other scenarios are conceivable. The first is a "hung Parliament," which would force Labor...

UK Muslims poised to punish BlairLUTON, England: Two years after the Iraq war, Britain’s Muslims are using their once-loyal Labour vote as a sharp reminder to Tony Blair that they are still angry. "Because of the British involvement in the Iraq war, we’re not happy with Labour," said Mubin Quraichi, the head of Luton’s central mosque. His understatement is backed up by more virulent protests, political rallies and militancy on the street aimed at punishing the prime minister and his Labour Party at the ballot box for dragging Britain into war. Iraq has hardly been an issue for most of...

Im worried if Tony losses the election then the next PM may be an anti-american go Tony.

After the last British election, the nickname-crazed George W. Bush took to calling Tony Blair ''Landslide.'' He might have to come up with an alternative term of endearment by the time this Thursday's results are in. The prime minister will win the election, but he's lost the campaign, which in the end will prove more decisive

London – There's a week to go until the British election, and it's a typical day for Tony Blair. During the morning press conference, he is variously accused, by reporters and opponents, of having lied to take his country to war in Iraq, of having covered up advice from senior lawyers that the war was illegal, and of having smothered internal dissent about his foreign policy. After lunch, on the stump in the west of England, he is pressing the flesh of some hesitant-looking voters when one turns away, and with hands clasped firmly to her sides, says, "I will...

I thought it was pretty good.

I HAD A DREAM. It was the morning after the general election. I was late for a television interview. Running for a train I fumbled for an explanation for what had just happened. Tony Blair had lost. A Labour Government had been defeated. By whom, the dream did not say. There was nothing in it about a Conservative victory: even in dreams there are limits to the imaginable. I have a vague recollection of fretting that we knew who had lost without really knowing who had won. My immediate problem, however, was with Labour’s defeat: how could this be reconciled...

Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party held its lead in the opinion polls, five days before the British general election, despite controversy over Iraq. A daily Populus tracker poll for The Times and ITV television put Labour at 40 percent, compared with 31 percent for the main opposition Conservatives and 22 percent for the Liberal Democrats. The findings, based on interviews with 1,428 adults between Monday and Thursday, suggested that a furore over the legal advice on which Blair took Britain into the Iraq war has not hurt Labour's chances. Twenty-one percent said they were less likely to vote Labour...

Conservative challenger Michael Howard is trailing Prime Minister Tony Blair in the British polls, and Margaret Thatcher has had enough. Facing the possibility of her cherished Tory Party losing to Blair again, and upset at the possibility that Labour will be leading England's government again, Thatcher skipped town for a little holiday - just days before the election. She is not campaigning for Howard, and British papers quote a close friend of the baroness as saying, "She wants to see a Conservative government again. She is frustrated that is not going to happen, despite the Labour Government's serious shortcomings and...

The whiff of anti-Semitism, according to the governing Labour Party, has been detected most alarmingly in the East London district of Bethnal Green. The area, once a center of the Jewish East End and now home to a large constituency of Bangladeshi Muslims, is where MP Oona King, daughter of a Jewish mother and a black American civil rights activist, is trying to defend a 10,000-strong majority against, among others, George Galloway, a staunch anti-Iraq war activist who was kicked out of Labour and has set up his own party, Respect. Labour sources claim that activists from Respect were behind...

British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party had a bad case of the pre-election jitters as new opinion polls showed next week's vote could be uncomfortably close, rather than the long-predicted re-election stroll. With the May 5 election just eight days away, the pressure was being felt on all sides, with the prime minister's opponents stepping up attacks on his character, a tactic Blair condemned as "personal abuse". Blair's Labour Party has long been expected to win a third consecutive term in office, an outcome which most pundits still see as a near-certainty. However, a pair of polls -- one...

LONDON, April 26 - At a time when American conservatives are ascendant, the British Conservative Party is adrift, troubled by internal feuding, casting about for a defining theme and struggling to defeat a relatively unpopular incumbent, Prime Minister Tony Blair, in an election nine days away. Most polls and analysts say the Conservative Party, led by Michael Howard, is heading for a historic third consecutive defeat against Labor on May 5. This prospect is all the more noteworthy given how vulnerable Mr. Blair is on issues of trust and leadership after his insistent assertions that prohibited weapons would be found...

Tony Blair hit out today at the taunts of "liar" from Michael Howard. The Prime Minister accused the Conservative leader of "playing the man, not the ball" as the election battle reached new depths of bitterness. He also said Mr Howard was being "extreme and inept". But with the polls showing signs that the attacks on Mr Blair's trustworthiness were paying off, the Tories relentlessly repeated the charge. They claimed Labour was "in a panic" at the effectiveness of the assault in hitting the likely turnout by disenchanted Labour voters. Mr Howard's liar taunt drew complaints from a bishop today...

OH, LUVVIE, I can’t tell you how marvellous it was; truly, darling, an unforgettable performance. There we were at the Old Vic Theatre — just twelve hundred of Labour’s closest friends — waiting for Tony and Gordon to do their matinee double act, when the whispered word went round the audience that the greatest political performer of our times would be making a cameo appearance — none other than old blue eyes, schmoozer in chief, the trouser president: Bill Clinton himself, via live satellite link. The occasion was a rally — the biggest of the campaign so far — to...

I joined the British Labor Party as soon as I was old enough to be eligible, which was sometime in 1965. I was not long after that expelled from its ranks, along with the majority of the Labor students' organization, because of Prime Minister Harold Wilson's contemptible support for the war in Vietnam. (I should have resigned, but I waited to be expelled instead.) Since then I have re-enlisted a few times, canvassed in a desultory way, off-and-on paid my dues, and hosted the odd Labor figure in Washington. It wouldn't have been thinkable for me to vote for any...

Former US president Bill Clinton rallied in support of Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party, urging British voters to turn out in force for a May 5 general election. Appearing on a giant screen at a Labour Party meeting in London, the former Democrat leader warned that when a country has "a progressive government in power, our people get a little easily disillusioned." "They don't like this policy or that policy. They sometimes fall into the trap of thinking it doesn't matter and there are no consequences." "But if you believe that look at the difference in the US between...

London - With 11 days left until the British general elections, a pair of fresh opinion polls Sunday showed Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party still in the lead, and voters largely bored. A YouGov poll in the Sunday Times put Labour at 37%, compared with 33% for the main opposition Conservatives led by Michael Howard and 23% for the Liberal Democrats led by Charles Kennedy. An ICM poll in the Sunday Telegraph saw Labour at 39%, six points ahead of the Tories, with the Lib Dems at 21%, as campaigning for the May 5 election heats up. Asked who'd...

The BBC was last night plunged into a damaging general election row after it admitted equipping three hecklers with microphones and sending them into a campaign meeting addressed by Michael Howard, the Conservative leader. The Tories have made an official protest after the hecklers, who were given the microphones by producers, were caught at a party event in the North West last week. Guy Black, the party's head of communications, wrote in a letter to Helen Boaden, the BBC's director of news, that the hecklers began shouting slogans that were "distracting and clearly hostile to the Conservative Party". These included...

Britain's 1.6 million Muslims may not at first glance seem to have significant voting power.However, with much of the community concentrated in key marginal seats and energized by such events as the Iraq war, their potential clout should not be underestimated. In 2001 there were 13 marginal constituencies with significant Muslim voting potential, according to the Muslim Council of Britain.Since then the number has risen significantly, with many seats once considered Labor strongholds now hotly contested. The North London constituency of Brent East, which has a large Muslim community, is a case in point.Labor-held since the 1970s, Labor candidate Paul...

Labour has widened its lead over the Conservatives to 10 points and is heading for a third successive landslide general election win on May 5 with a majority of more than 150, an ICM opinion poll for The Telegraph reveals today. The survey shows that Labour has surged ahead in the past week of campaigning, since Gordon Brown returned to the front line and the party made the handling of the economy the centrepiece of its campaign. ICM puts Labour on 40 per cent, up two points from last Sunday, with the Conservatives down four per cent on 30 and...