WHAT DEMONSTRATION? :

British Labour party support drops on Iraq fears (Jeremy Lovell, September 23, 2002, Reuters)

The popularity of Britain's ruling Labour Party is plumbing new lows as fears grow over a possible military move against Iraq, according to a poll in the Guardian newspaper on Tuesday. [...]

The Guardian/ICM poll, distilled from telephone interviews of 1,000 adults between September 20 and 22, shows that support for Labour -- which has won two consecutive electoral landslide victories in 1997 and 2001 -- at just 39 percent.

It is the lowest level of support since domestic petrol price protests two years ago.

The poll showed that disapproval of a military attack on Iraq -- which dipped to 40 percent from 50 immediately after the first anniversary commemorations of the September 11 kamikaze attacks on the United States -- had climbed back to 46 percent.

It also showed 65 percent approval of an attack on Baghdad if there was sufficient proof that Saddam had developed new mass killing capabilities.

Yesterday 400,000 Brits, give or take a hundred thousand, marched on London to protest government's disregard for the way of life in England's non-urban areas. During the weekend of the march, a poll was conducted on the popularity of the governing party. That support was at its lowest level, despite general support for that government's imminent participation in a war. Reuters lookd at these facts and determined that the slump in support for Labor was a function of worries about the war?
Posted by Orrin Judd at September 23, 2002 9:51 PM