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IAN WILLIAMS is available for Media Interviews: IanWilliams@MaximsNews.com

 MaximsNews Columnist

Ian Williams

Tony Blair's Election...

Ian Williams is a journalist and U.N. Correspondent for The Nation and a weekly columnist for www.MaximsNews.com.   Ian Williams is the past president of the United Nations Correspondents Association.     IanWilliams@MaximsNews.com

          UNITED NATIONS -- 7 May 2005 / www.MaximsNews.com  / Collectively, the British electorate showed a lot of good sense this week. 

They punished Tony Blair for arrogance in not listening to Labour supporters’ views but recognized that the Labour Party had done a lot of good while in office. 

They confidently expected the conservatives would do a lot worse.  

While a lot of them voted for the Liberal Democrats, it was more of protest vote against the two major parties than for any inherent merit or expectations of that party.

The polls and election workers all came back with the message. 

Labour was elected for a third term in office, despite Tony Blair, not because of him. 

Everyone knows that the voters supported Labour in the full expectation that sooner or later Gordon Brown would replace him.

So they contrived to return a Labour government with a much reduced majority which gives Blair more than enough to govern with – unless he does something silly like follow George W. Bush into an invasion of another country.

In that case there are now probably sufficient vertebrate Labour MPs to deny him a majority. 

Like Tigger, Blair will get his bounce back, because he’s that sort of guy. 

With his irrepressible conviction that he knows best, Blair will surely be in a confrontation with his own party soon: and he will be in a much weaker position.

Even as one hopes for a sooner rather than later replacement, for the record we should note that Blair has been perhaps over-maligned. 

Before he was cast as Bush’s poodle, he was often depicted as a British version of Bill Clinton, who never found a principle that he would not sell for a vote. 

Neither comparison is accurate. 

While Clinton tailored his policies to achieve electoral results, the British Prime Minister almost actively at times seemed to be giving the finger to all parts of his support base.

He stuck to his principles, on Iraq, on the introduction of university fees, on keeping Britain out of European Union social standards, on the private finance initiative for public services, even when the voters, his party, and his supporters told him that those principles were wrong.  

In fact, some of those that told him so most strongly were precisely the middle class wooers that Labour (with a lot of help from Conservative unspeakability) had painfully turned into supporters. 

That is why his majority is now so reduced: the voters sent him a message. “Listen!”

At the same time, he is no Bush. 

There is none of the conservative Christian agenda about him.  

His administration’s gays are hardly in the closet, abortion is not an issue and in Britain, frankly, anyone calling for chastity would be treated as a joke.  

In economic terms, Blair's government, in practice, has been far to the left of most of the Democratic Party. 

It introduced a minimum wage for the first time in Britain, which this year will be the equivalent of $9.60 -- with free health care as always. 

What's more, the quality of that health care British is much better too, thanks to Tony Blair. 

By 2008, Labour will have double spending on the National Health Service since it took office.

The Labour government has reduced the amount Britain spends on defense from 10 percent to 6 percent of the budget. 

It introduced tax credits for retirees and poor families, measures which, along with the minimum wage, have resulted in falling poverty rates among children and pensioners both. 

And it has achieved all this while maintaining a steadily growing economy and falling unemployment, which is now at its lowest level in thirty year. 

Compare the pound to the dollar if you want to see the results.

Even on foreign policy, while Blair did indeed have delusions of grandeur and think that he could steer Bush’s headlong rush to war, his government has strongly supported the Kyoto accords, Nuclear non-proliferation, the International Criminal Court and many other issues that have the Republican right frothing at the mouth. 

It has accepted the target of 0.7% of GDP for overseas development assistance, and has been pushing strongly for debt forgiveness.

People used to American-style presidential elections may wonder, if the war was so important, and people were so convinced that Blair was lying, why didn’t they throw him out?

There are two big differences. 

The US Federal Government’s most visible responsibilities are foreign affairs, defense, taxation – and Social Security.

Most of day to day life, when it is not a personal responsibility, is run by the cities, counties and states. 

But in a European-style parliamentary system, the national government determines the condition of health, education, welfare, police, transport and many other day to day services. 

Americans do not, generally, elect their mayors and governors on where they stand on war and peace. 

So a British election, indeed most European contests, is about a much wider range of affairs than any foreign events.

The second difference is that European political parties are real parties. 

The British showed that they trusted the Labour Party, as an institution, much more than they trusted Tony Blair. 

Indeed Blair has in large measure been punished electorally for departing from what was commonly accepted as party policy. 

Even people who disagreed with the war realized that many Labour Members of Parliament did too. 

Despite Blair’s efforts to reduce his party to a fan club with a fund raising PO Box, he needed it to get elected. 

The scale of the revolt was shown in South Wales, where Blair’s officials over-rode the local party to impose a New Labour supporter. 

The electorate voted in a local rebel, whom the local Labour Party had preferred, by a huge majority.

The alternative was a Conservative party that was, on many of the issues on which Blair has compromised Labour principles, such as ID cards and the British equivalent of PATRIOT Act anti-terrorist principles, even harder and more illiberal. 

The modern British Conservative Party makes that of Margaret Thatcher seem quite soft and squishly by comparison.

So what does the future hold? 

If he had been more politically astute, the cabinet he announced on his first day would have tried to draw back in Robin Cook, Claire Short, Peter Kilfoyle and other rebels who had quit on principle, if only on LBJ’s principle of the attractions of having people urinating out of the tent rather than into it.

That would have bought him some time. 

Now, emboldened by their increased leverage over a smaller majority, they may start organizing more forcefully. 

More frighteningly for Blair and his acolytes, heartened by the increased prospects for dissent, more of the hundreds of thousands of Labour Party members who let their membership lapse because the leadership made it plain it only wanted their votes and money, not their advice, may now decide to rejoin.

That is good news for Brown, who, although he has not had serious policy differences with Blair, is at least attuned to the culture of the party, its members and the unions. 

A very important part of that culture is a collective process as opposed to the Tony knows best approach. 

A fourth term may yet be possible, especially if the Conservatives continue their recent self destructive streak.

          IanWilliams@MaximsNews.com