Prime Minister Tony Blair faced disaster as the voting booths closed at 10.00. pm on Thursday evening for Britain's local elections. All the usual indicators—opinion polls, canvassing returns—pointed to a loss of 300, perhaps 400, Labor seats. Losses on that scale might force Blair to announce publicly a firm (and early) date for his retirement in favor of Chancellor Gordon Brown.
Six hours later the situation was far worse. Labor had lost 250 seats. It was a major defeat but short of a rout. Blair might be able to survive for a further two years or even longer. As a character crushed (by different circumstances) in a Michael Frayn novel shouts: "It's not the despair. I can stand the despair. It's the hope I can't stand."
Blair is better placed to withstand the "hope" than either Brown or most Labour MPs. He has declared his intention of resigning before the next national election (which must be held no later than May 2010.) Labour's performance this week raises only a short-term question for him; how long can he hang on between now and then? Blair is an optimist. He will calculate after Thursday night that he can hang on for another two years. At least.
But Brown and every other Labour MP has to wonder if this week's losses leave enough room for an electoral recovery by their preferred date of May 2009 for the next general election. They now regard Blair as an electoral liability. But would forcing him out damage their chances more than continuing to stagger on under his leadership? A loss of 400 seats would have settled the question in favor of ousting him. A loss of only 100 seats—the opposite. But as it is . . . it's the hope they can't stand.
So what happens next? Ministers on these occasions always argue as follows: all governments are unpopular in mid-term; this is merely an average debacle; and it follows a particularly bad run of news. That last argument at least is true enough.
It was revealed last week that the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, a leading Blair loyalist, had released onto the streets 1023 foreign criminals, including murderers and rapists, instead of deporting them after their sentences had been served. At least five of these criminals had later committed serious crimes—one a murder. To complete the picture of what the British call "a complete bloody shambles," no one knew where they were.
Then, the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, a bluff symbol of Old Labor rectitude, was discovered to have had a flaming affair with a civil servant in his office, Ms.Tracey Temple . Sunday's tabloid papers contained her account of their trysts. One had taken place in a government apartment immediately after a ceremony honoring Britain 's Iraq war dead; another in a hotel suite while an oblivious Mrs. Prescott waited for her husband in the downstairs restaurant. (To be fair, Prescott is a busy man . . . )
The final episode was less a scandal than a brutal sign of the government's decline in popularity even with its natural supporters. Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, was booed by nurses when she claimed that the National Health Service was enjoying its best year ever. Since health workers were being fired across Britain at the time, it was a gaffe too far. Ms. Hewitt suffered from being the luckless symbol of a government that had poured billions of Pounds into public services without actually improving them.
Will she now be fired as a result? Someone's head must roll to show the voters that their displeasure has been taken seriously, to punish failure, and to give the government a fresh look. But how many heads? And whose? If Blair is to keep a clear head on his own shoulders, as he plainly intends, a defeat of this scale would suggest a fairly large reshuffle of lesser heads.
Rumors started spreading around Whitehall even before the voting stopped. Prescott is to lose some of his many responsibilities, it is rumored, but to remain Deputy Prime Minister. Hmmn . . . would he not then be a grateful and impotent supporter of Blair hereafter. Unsuccessful loyalist Clarke may go or be shuffled downwards—to be replaced by whom exactly? Well, perhaps by that nice rising Blairite Transport Minister, Alan Johnson, whom well-informed people have recently begun discussing as a possible successor to Blair if a bus runs over Brown? And Hewitt? Wait and see.
If most Labour MPs glumly interpret such moves as evidence that Blair will stay as long as he can, Brown and his backers must surely place an even more sinister interpretation upon them: namely, that the Prime Minister is determined not only to stay but also to be succeeded eventually by someone other than his brooding Chancellor. Once they decide that, the balance of advantage will shift towards ousting Blair as soon as possible even at the temporary cost of party disunity.
Such a calculation should be further encouraged by the second main result of the election: the revival of the Tories under their new young leader, David Cameron, who won 39 per cent of the popular vote compared to the 27 per cent gained by the centrist Liberal Democrats under their new elderly leader "Ming" Campbell.
This Tory success should not be exaggerated. It is only one per cent more than they won two years ago. It scarcely penetrated the inhospitable North of England. It occurs after six months of unbelievably favorable media coverage. And despite the existentialist despair that has gripped Tories in recent years, their party was bound to recover once the spell of New Labor was broken as it has been.
Even so, the fact that the Tories rather than the Lib-Dems immediately benefited from the breaking of that spell is crucial. As Labour MPs know well, the Lib-Dems are ultimately a nuisance. Only the Tories can actually defeat Labour and form a government. Until this week Labour enjoyed the advantage that there was no alternative to them. There is now. It weakens Labour. And Labour's new nervousness weakens Blair.
Oh what it is to be tortured by hope!
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