Strain starts to show on Blair
By CNN's European Political Editor Robin Oakley
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 Should Tony Blair win a third term, when will Gordon Brown succeed him?
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ROBIN OAKLEY'S ELECTION BLOG | |
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LONDON, England (CNN) -- Who was that ageing figure with his wispy, graying hair and lined face buying an ice cream on the campaign trail for Chancellor Gordon Brown?
It took a second look to ensure that, yes, it was Tony Blair. Eight years of government are now well etched on his features and the strain of the election is showing.
Blair, remember, is not used to having to fight elections in the fullest sense of the word. In 1997 he was a fresh face, a welcome relief after eighteen years of the Conservatives, elected almost by acclamation to replace a tired old government weakened by sleaze allegations. In 2001 he was a prime minister in total command facing an unfocussed and still divided opposition.
In his third election as Labour's leader Blair is dragging along with him all the disillusion inevitably engendered by eight years in government.
You simply cannot please all of the people all of the time and though we do not have a constitution to organize it for us perhaps Britain's political parties would be wise to institute their own two-term limit for prime ministers.
Think what Lady Thatcher's reputation would be now if she had gone after two terms and not embarked on the poll tax and the shrill denunciations of Europe which wrecked her legacy in latter days.
Those outside Britain find it hard to understand Blair's comparative unpopularity now. In the U.S., for example, he is seen as an international statesman, an enormously accomplished communicator with the right words for every occasion and an ability sometimes to express what President George Bush wants to say with an elegance which the president himself lacks.
Even in Britain 55 per cent still say Blair has "charisma," a rating more than double that of his Conservative opponent Michael Howard and a significant figure in this age of celebrity.
But in Britain there are now many who dismiss Blair's verbal dexterity as the wordiness of an over-practiced politician. It is not just the Iraq factor which is dogging the PM: it has become somehow symbolic of his ingrained tendency to exaggerate his case.
Iraq has played more strongly in this campaign than many thought. At the start only 3 per cent told pollsters that Iraq would affect the way they voted. But the war and the way he made the case for it seeps out into other issues too.
Opposition parties have worked relentlessly to make it the election a referendum on trust in Blair as much as a contest on wider issues and the constant ration of stories about Iraq has kept the wrong subject in the headlines for the prime minister.
Last week it was the leaking and then the official publication of a document revealing the attorney general's original doubts about the legality of the war.
At the weekend it was the disclosure of a Downing Street meeting in July 2002 at which Blair, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon planned military action months before the government ever revealed it was being contemplated.
Then, with just three days to go Blair again got the headlines he did not want with the death in Iraq of Guardsman Anthony Wakefield and his widow's declaration that she blamed the PM for his death.
To their credit, the other party leaders did not. Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy said it would be "completely wrong" for any competing politician to try to score political points over a serviceman's death. But the tabloid newspapers did the finger pointing for them.
Unless every opinion pollster in the land has got it badly wrong, Blair is still heading for a historic third consecutive victory, the first time any Labour leader has done that. But, thanks to the Iraq factor, this time it will be a victory achieved in spite of Labour's leader rather than because of him.
Few Labour candidates choose to put his picture on their campaign literature and, as discussed yesterday, he has had to cede to his long time rival Gordon Brown an effective dual leadership in this campaign in order to reassure the Labour faithful. (And the winner is ... Gordon Brown)
The great communicator looked sweaty and ill at ease when he appeared after the other two main party leaders on the BBC's Question Time (though what were his handlers up to: as Greg Dyke, the former BBC Director General and no longer any friend of Blair's, pointed out, no one with any sense goes on third after the TV lights have been on for an hour and a half).
In truth though Blair has always been a worrier about elections. He refused to believe it was in the bag even in 1997 and he frets constantly about possible trip-ups.
This time, thanks to Iraq and the danger of discontented Labour sympathizers drifting off to the Liberal Democrats, the one major party which opposed the war, that tendency has become even more exaggerated. His exasperation breaks through constantly as he asserts that he simply had to make a decision whether or not to get rid of Saddam Hussein "And I chose to do so." Sometimes you would think there wasn't a U.S. Army there at all.
Blair's wobbles have induced the Labour Party to launch a major attack on the Liberal Democrats in the final week. They have also induced Labour to talk rubbish, suggesting that if one in ten Labour supporters choose because of their reservations over Iraq to abstain or to vote Liberal Democrat, then they could push Michael Howard into No 10 Downing Street.
That simply is not going to happen. Remember that the Tories need a lead of at least ten points in the polls to win power. They need a lead of at least six points to deprive Labour of a majority. And not a single poll in this campaign has yet shown the Conservatives with a lead of even 1 per cent.
Howard, who insists that he would have supported regime change in Iraq whether or not Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, can wound Blair. But unless every opinion polling firm in Britain has got it completely wrong, he cannot beat him.
