Gerard Baker previews today’s local elections:
Having promised in last year’s general election campaign to step down before the next election, Blair has already limited his options. Since everyone knows he’s going, the argument goes, why prolong it? His closest aides still think he can soldier on for another year or so before handing over to his designated and increasingly restive neighbour Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer. But the betting in Westminster is that if the results are bad enough tonight they could accelerate the prime minister’s departure from Downing Street.
How bad do they have to be?
Labour could well finish third in the popular vote behind both the main opposition Conservatives and Labour’s fellow lefties the Liberal Democrats. That has happened before in local elections and would not of itself necessarily be terminal. Blair may indeed be helped somewhat by the diffusion of anti-government votes. The Tories who, if the history of local elections is a guide, should be making massive gains, may not advance all that much from their position in the equivalent elections four years ago. The Liberal Democrats are still a local force rather than a plausible alternative government. Most intriguing will be the strength of other parties- the Greens, the anti-European UK Independence Party, the anti-war Respect party of Saddam Hussein’s friend George Galloway and the rebarbative, neo-fascist, anti-immigration British National Party.
If they all advance at Labour’s expense it will muddy the waters somewhat and make it easier for Blair to claim the elections were no more than a passing protest, with people depositing their votes in the nearest available receptacle, safe in the knowledge they wouldn’t actually be choosing a government.
But come tomorrow morning this may sound like whistling past the graveyard. Thousands of Labour councilors will wake up out of their (part-time) jobs, their immediate political prospects in tatters.
If they and their friends on Labour’s benches in the House of Commons decide Blair is the culprit, they will surely increase the tension up the line to their political leaders to do something about it.
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