All I ever see is how incredibly unpopular the Iraq war is with the British people, and how much they freak (more so than we in the USA) over their war dead, British hostages being beheaded, etc.
But I also see that Blair is still favored to soundly win re-election in 2005. Is this the case? Does the war, despite its unpopularity, have so little effect on the vote? Or is the war not that unpopular in the UK?
(And when is the election? All I could find were projected dates from May through October…)
If the election were held tomorrow Blair would win because there’s no credible opposition. If the situation remains this way until the election next year Blair will walk it.
Government can choose when to call the election anytime until their term is up. May is most likely.
Many recent opinion polls have shown Labour support at around the 32 - 34% mark, often only a point or two higher than the Conservatives. Conventional wisdom amongst pollsters is that an equal share of the vote gives Labour a large number more actual seats than the Conservatives (probably about a hundred more), but these assumptions need not actually be true. Recent by-elections have demonstrated signs of anti-Labour tactical voting from disaffected Labour voters which could make the final result closer than many predict and even a hung parliament with the Lib Dems holding balance of power is not out of the question.
You really will have to provide your source of information for this statement:
“…and how much they freak (more so than we in the USA) over their war dead, British hostages being beheaded, etc.”
The British were less enamoured with going to war against Iraq than the Americans (but so was the rest of the world) however just before the war began this poll gave this result:
"Three quarters (75%) of people in Britain would now be prepared to support British troops joining any American-led military action against Iraq; however, this support is conditional both on UN inspectors finding proof that Iraq is trying to hide weapons of mass destruction, and on the UN Security Council voting in favour of military action. "
Once the lies of Blair and Bush were uncovered it’s not surprising enthusiasm for the war began to diminish. Blair is more unpopular now than he ever has been, but as already mentioned there is no credible opposition. I wouldn’t say it’s cut and dried but the Labour party is still the favourite with the bookies -and they don’t make that many mistakes.
The General Election date itself is decided upon by the governing party.
Election Law
In the United Kingdom, the life of a Parliament cannot exceed 5 years. This means that national elections must be held no later than 5 years after the date of the previous election. The last election was held on 7th June 2001 and therefore the next election need not be held before June 2006.
Because there is no fixed date other than this “outer limit”, the Prime Minister of the day has an advantage not enjoyed by his counterparts in other countries where elections take place at fixed intervals - he can call the election at a date he feels to be most advantageous - early to take account of popularity in the country, or to get a specific electoral mandate for a specific policy - late in order to ride out what he may hope is temporary electoral disadvantage.
However, holding out to the very last minute is often perceived as a sign of weakness in support, so the most likely scenario is that the next UK Parliamentary Elections will be held in 2005.
I was in Scotland as the war broke out and the people I met didn’t seem to be for it. There was already skepticism about the WMD claims and a feeling that the whole war was just unreasonable.
My Scottish friends described the election choice as “Voting for Blair is like not voting for Hitler”… in the feeling for what the choice of politicians were. Also a lot of the British army is Scottish… and as far as the war dead, a lot of the time they were making a big deal because ‘friendly fire’ from us killed them. There was a stretch of 8 or so at one point.
As far as I can tell, the war is definitely unpopular over there, but you have to remember it’s not the #1 issue. According to polls, it doesn’t even rate as the top issue in the election in the USA (though it’s close). So if Blair’s domestic policies are popular, that is probably more important to British voters.
Can someone elaborate on why there’s no “credible opposition.” Who are the opposition and why aren’t they credible? Why hasn’t some political rival of Blair’s capitalized on his apparent weakness?
Sorry, I don’t know much about British politics. If someone could provide some brief primer that’d be appreciated too.
The main opposition party are the Conservative party, traditionally right of centre to Labour’s left of centre. When Tony Blair became leader of Labour, the Conservatives were coming to the end of what would be 18 years of unbroken power (including Margaret Thatcher’s reign). Blair’s great achievement was to make Labour electable again, which he did by moving the party substantially towards the centre ground, claiming for himself many policies that one would traditionally expect to be ‘Conservative policies’.
The irony of this is that the Conservatives now find that, is they espouse their traditional ideas, they do not differentiate themselves from Labour in any way (and many people will take a ‘better the devil we know’ attitude), whereas, if they try to look different, the only direction they can head in is to the right, which pleases their core vote (about 28% of the electorate, mainly located in rural areas and southern England and generally older than the average), but fails to speak to any of the people that they need to swing to them to actually stand a chance of winning. Labour’s support at this point is soft enough that a really charasmatic leader would stand a chance of fighting on the centre ground and winning on personality. Unfortunately they don’t have one. They have tended to change the leader fairly regularly recently, and they’ve all been unremittingly awful. On Iraq, btw, the Conservatives supported the invasion (their leader having had briefings on the supporting intelligence), so it is difficult for them to make mileage out of that without looking like weasels.
The third party are the Liberal Democrats, who were founded as a centrist alternative to the traditional left and right wing parties, but who are now to the left of Labour on the majority of issues. They can expect support from about 20% of the voting electorate, but the nature of the electoral system means that this is only likely to translate into about 10% of the actual seats (last election Labour got 62% of the seats with 42% of the vote).
No, definately not. The most likely scenario for Iraq finishing Tony Blair has always been him resigning. If he were proven (or widely perceived to have been proven, actually there is plenty of proof) to have mislead parliament or acted in contravention of international law, then he would be compelled to resign. The government is at present refusing to publish the advice that was given before the war by the Attorny General relating to the legality of going to war without the cloak of immediate self-defense or UN sanction, if they were forced to release the legal advice, that could potentially be damaging to Blair.
The only way Blair can possibly lose is through Iraq. If events escalate over there, or something bad happens that is perceived to have been triggered by the war, he could yet get into trouble.
You have to remember that much of his party’s support is based on the left (though Avenger’s analysis is entirely accurate) - and the anti war demonstrators would include a lot of Labour voters. Although they wouldn’t vote Conservative, they might abstain or vote LibDem. This was not such a problem for John Howard - the anti-war Australians were mostly his enemies in any case, and I presume the same applies to Bush to some extent.
Actually I agree with your recollections. When I spoke to my workmates and others, there was quite a sharp divide between those for and those against- probably 50/50. It didn’t take long for those for the war to start having misgivings because the proof of the WMD etc. just wasn’t forthcoming. I used that particular cite because it came from a well known source and was the highest figure I could find for agreement with the war, although as I’ve said it didn’t concur with my own memory of events.
The size of the anti-war rally in London emphasised this too.