May 5, 2005
HIS LAST GIFT TO THE PARTY HE HATES:
Labour to win, say polls and swings (Simon Jeffery, May 6, 2005, Guardian Unlimited)
Labour is set for a historic third term but with a sharply reduced majority, according to exit polls and early declarations that showed swings and a gain for the Conservatives.A Mori/NOP poll of voters who had cast their ballots gave Labour 37% of the vote, with the Tories on 33%. This would translate into 356 seats for Labour, an overall majority of 66.
Labour won the 2001 election with a 165 majority.
In the first straight battle between Labour and the Tories in a marginal seat, the Tories won back David Mellor's former south London seat of Putney with a 6% swing against Labour.
Declarations in seats where the Liberal Democrats were the strongest challengers to Labour showed swings of 4%-7% against sitting MPs but no gains for Charles Kennedy's party, which had hoped for a breakthrough in this year's election.
Blair majority 'slashed' (George Jones, 06/05/2005, Daily Telegraph)
Tony Blair was heading back to No 10 early today for a record third term but with his authority severely dented by the prospect of a substantially reduced majority.On a night of unexpected setbacks for Labour, Mr Blair suffered a serious backlash over the Iraq war, while the Conservatives showed the first signs of revival in their fortunes since 1992.
New Labour was caught in a double squeeze, with the Liberal Democrats benefiting from war protest votes.
The Conservatives recorded their first victory in Putney, one of the key battleground marginals in west London. Justine Greening regained the seat, which the Tories lost in 1997 in the landslide that swept Mr Blair to power. There was a swing of six per cent from Labour, much bigger than the opinion polls had been predicting.
Shortly before 1am, Labour conceded defeat in Blaenau Gwent - previously their safest seat in Wales, once held by Aneurin Bevan and Michael Foot - where Peter Law, an independent candidate, overturned a Labour majority of 19,000.
Bob Marshall-Andrews, a persistent critic of Tony Blair, said he expected to be defeated in the Kent seat of Medway. He blamed the voters' dislike of Mr Blair and said the war had caused a "serious haemorrhage of Labour votes".
But there was relief for Labour when Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, held on to Blackburn with a reduced majority. There had been fears that he could be a principal casualty of the war because of quarter of his constituents are Muslims.
Nice that the three Anglospheric leaders of the war won historic victories and that Mr. Blair gets to go out on top, but they will now ditch him. Unfortunately the Tories may come close enough to not realize how fundamentally they need to change. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 5, 2005 9:21 PM
Dumping Blair and ditching his "Third Way" policy at the same time, which seems to be what many in Labour want to do, may make it easier for the Tories to rebound without learning, since it would give back the middle ground to their party by default.
Posted by: John at May 5, 2005 10:07 PMReally, though, this is the 4th conservative victory of the past year--Howard, Bush, Benedict, now a surprising show of force by the Tories (and, notably, no gains for the truly leftist party).
Posted by: Timothy at May 5, 2005 10:11 PMWhat was striking while watching the C-Span 2 broadcast of the BBC was how none of the analysts could see what was quite obvious. The Liberal Democrats are effectively dead. They made minimal gains off of the Iraq war, which will be a faded memory by the time of the next election. What will their issue be?
Also, the Conservatives did very well in London, perhaps a reaction to Red Ken Livingstone, whose name was unmentioned and also as a reaction to the sky-rocketing crime, mostly committed by Bengali Muslims, in London.
Blair held on by a huge margin by any rational standard. Brown is certainly to his right on economics, but will be less interested in supporting America in its efforts to fight terror. That is fine, the British military since Wellington died has been far more hindrance than help. An America that has allies among Japan, S. Korea, India, Poland, Israel, Taiwan and Australia is far better off than having allies among the jealous, bitter, self-important, sclerotic nations of Old Europe.
Posted by: bart at May 6, 2005 12:00 PM