Tony Blair's Labour Party won a historic successive third term in Thursday's British parliamentary elections with an apparently comfortable majority of 66 seats. Yet he is not in a great celebratory mood because his party's parliamentary majority has been sharply reduced by nearly 100 seats. This is the direct outcome of a deficit of trust in his leadership style, more to the point, his decision to follow the lead of US President George W. Bush to go to war against Iraq, and for lying to his people about Saddam Hussain's non-existent WMDs. By the time ballots had been counted in 627 constituencies out of the 646-seat House, Labour's main rival, Conservative Party, had improved its performance from the previous 166 seats to 197. Still its leader, Michael Howard, has announced his decision to resign as the party chief for having failed to take his party to victory.
The Liberal Democrats - the only party to oppose the Iraq war - though they expected to do even better due to a widespread anti-war sentiment, are happy to have bagged 62 seats - the biggest ever number for them in eight decades. In fact, the Lib Dem leader, Charles Kennedy, has proclaimed that now "a three-party order is with us."
The Labour win was almost certain given that during its last two terms in office British economy has done very well at a time its European neighbours, especially Germany and France, were struggling hard to stay buoyant. Unemployment and inflation rates have consistently remained at low levels while the government has been spending a lot of money to improve public services.
These were compelling enough reasons for a good majority of the British people to vote for Labour. Besides, Blair's New Labour having annexed much of the Conservative programme territory, there was little philosophical difference between the policies of Labour and the Conservatives. Hence so far as the issues of bread and butter are concerned, a majority of the voters had a clear choice to make on the basis of the solid Labour performance in the past and the promise to do more in the next term. It is the issue of Iraq that has dragged down the party's huge majority of the past. A lot of the traditional labour voters - middle class professionals, students and Muslim immigrants - have turned away from it to punish Tony Blair for acting as Bush's loyal ally - in popular British parlance, his poodle - and lying on his behalf. Iraq, in fact, had evoked unprecedented world-wide interest in this British election.
The war's opponents, both inside and outside Britain, can now take some comfort from the fact that Blair's Iraq policy has given his party a bloody nose, and put a question mark on his own political future. A former Labour MP and a strong critic of the Iraq war, George Galloway, who has won from a traditional Labour constituency in East London, contesting from the anti-war Respect Party platform, has been quick to deliver his harangue.
"Mr Blair", he thundered in his victory speech," this is for Iraq...All the people you have killed, all the lies you have told have come back to haunt you." Though Blair had earlier been indicating that if reelected he would serve the full third term, the election result may push him towards a different decision. People are already talking about him leaving in mid-term to make way for his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown. He might have to do that at an even earlier point.
As it is, Britain is to hold a referendum on the European constitution next year. The issue being much controversial in the country, if it leads to a negative vote - a strong possibility - Blair will have little choice but to stand down in Brown's favour. The catalyst for that change would still be the present public show of lack of trust in his leadership.
This clear eventuality as well as Michael Howard's decision to resign in the face of his party's electoral defeat, point to the strength of the oldest democracy's party system in which no leader is bigger than the interest of the party he/she leads.
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