Blair’s Labour as Unpopular as Michael Foot’s in 1983

Next Thursday, voters in Britain will cast ballots in local elections. They will do so with polls showing that the New Labour of Tony Blair is as unpopular as the Old Labour of Michael Foot in 1983, the year of the Thatcher landslide. Labour is the choice of a mere 27% of the electorate. The only thing that will keep Labour in power in any local council after Thursday is the increased support for minor parties. Rather than run to the Tories or the LibDems, voters seem to support nationalists, pre-Blair socialists, greens and outright cranks.

The Independent sponsored the poll and reported, “CommunicateResearch puts the Conservatives on 36 per cent (up one point on last month's survey), Labour on 27 per cent (down four points), the Liberal Democrats on 22 per cent (up two points) and other parties on 15 per cent (up one point).” The paper added, “Labour has lost ground among women in the past month, with support falling from 32 per cent to just 24 per cent. But it has the backing of 31 per cent of men. Support among those aged 18 to 24 has dropped from 39 per cent last month to 24 per cent.”

Up in Scotland, the voting will be about more than sewers and schools. The Scottish National Party, which is dedicated to dissolving the Union with the rest of the UK, is likely to emerge as the largest in the Scottish Assembly. With all the other Scottish parties opposed to a referendum on independence, the SNP may decide not to pursue such just yet. It may well press for greater powers within the Union. As the Kurds understand, sometimes the value of independence compared with the value of autonomy is not big enough to be measured, and the potential cost prohibitive.

The Tories are, naturally, happy about having the most support across the entire UK (despite being almost non-existent in Scotland). Still, 36% is short of the 40% they set as their own target. More worrying is the apparent persistence of the UK Independence Party (anti-Europe conservatives mostly) and the British National Party (a racist mob of reactionaries who have given up on the Tories). The Conservatives’ right flank is exposed, and France’s Jean Marie Le Pen may well have a British counterpart someday soon.

The shellacking that the Labourites appeared destined to suffer next week will have ramifications beyond the local councils. Mr. Blair will depart from office shortly thereafter (currently, July is the likely month according to most UK bookies). When he does, under the cloud of defeat, it will seriously hamper his successor (most likely the current Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown). Interestingly, the bookies believe that the next election will most likely be in 2009, leaving Mr. Brown or whoever succeeds Mr. Blair as a short-termer, in large part due to Mr. Blair’s disastrous showing since 2003’s invasion of Iraq-Nam. American politician Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill liked to say, “All politics is local,” and in Britain, next week, that will be proved.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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