British leaders descend on marginals

Tony Blair speaks at a rally in Hove, Sussex. Picture / Reuters

LONDON - The May Day Bank Holiday in Britain, one of the hottest days this year, saw leaders of the three political parties out on the stump in their shirt sleeves, frantically touting for votes in marginal constituencies that are crucial to Thursday's election and to the future of the leaders themselves.

Prime Minister Tony Blair and the leader of the third party, Charles Kennedy, of the Liberal Democrats, kept their ties on.

Conservative leader Michael Howard, campaigning in Cornwall, an area that often votes Liberal, discarded his as he posed with his wife against the rocky coastline of St Agnes Head, an area notorious for shipwrecks and smugglers.

Blair, whose wife, Cherie, was on the stump as well, smiling besottedly at him and clapping every word, as is her wont, was under yet more pressure over the Iraq war with the publication by the right-wing Sunday Times of more revelations from July 2002, eight months before the first attack.

These showed he was talking about regime change as a reason for attack, even though that was accepted as illegal under international law.

The war is refusing to go away as an election issue but still does not seem to be damaging significantly Blair's standing with the electorate.

What it is doing inside the Labour Party is different.

London's morning papers included a poll for the Times, sister paper of the Sunday Times, also owned by Rupert Murdoch, which showed Blair taking 42 per cent of the poll, up 2 per cent on a week ago, with Howard down 1 per cent to 29 and the Lib Dems stable at 21.

The News of the World, a sleazy mass market paper and another member of the Murdoch stable, rather embarrassedly asked its readers to back Blair as the fourth paper in the stable, the Sun, a rabid tabloid, did a week ago, sending red smoke from a replica Vatican chimney on its roof.

Although the latest poll figures, applied nationally, would return Blair for a third term with a huge majority of up to 150 seats, the parties are seeing that in marginal seats the Iraq war, which turned two million on to the streets in protests two years ago, plus the lack of improvement in health and education which voters perceive whatever the Government claims, could cut that majority to 80.

The prediction is that Blair will be returned. But with that vast potential difference, the parties still see an awful lot up for grabs. For Howard and Kennedy the subtext is that if their parties do not do well enough, their heads could roll.

Kennedy, whose wife and new baby Donald were briefly on parade at the weekend, is safer than Howard, who is almost certain to vanish if his party's showing is as bad as the Times predicts.

One of Howard's problems on the Iraq war - as Blair was quick to point out - is that he cannot sing from a simple hymn sheet.

He remains in favour of the attack on Iraq and has said he would have struck sooner, even knowing it might be deemed illegal.

He is accusing Blair of lying over the war and saying, therefore, he is untrustworthy on all issues.

The odd fact about this campaign is that Blair, with increasing desperation, is seeking to ensure that his core voters vote and that he holds the undecided voters in key marginals.

The predicted Labour turnout is low but the Conservatives' is expected to be high. Labour's problem is partly electoral boredom, but mostly dissatisfaction with Blair. Even committed Labour members are struggling to decide how, or whether, to vote.

The infighting in the Labour Party between Blair and his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, who have been virtually not speaking for two years, is not helping.

They opened the campaign with a cheesy film, showing the pair of them in matching ties, soft focus and agreeing.

But the disclosures about Iraq have reopened wounds. Brown, who held out against attacking Iraq, has been put on the back foot just when he thought he was coasting towards becoming Prime Minister relatively soon after the election.

Blair and Brown have long had an understanding that Brown would be the anointed successor and Blair has said he will step aside during the next Parliament.

But the disclosure of just how murky the decision-making process was that took Britain into Iraq, and the fact that Brown agreed to it, makes his succession more difficult. The Labour Party membership - as opposed to those unhappy Conservative voters in middle England who put Blair in power - has a vote in leadership elections and is less than happy with Brown's performance.

In the euphoria of victory - if Labour achieves that on Friday - some of the infighting could be forgotten. But not for long.