Word: labour
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...monumental piffle on the campaign trail in Britain. The Conservative Party announced a major initiative to fight teenage binge drinking, which-given the much celebrated local custom-seemed as likely to succeed as a plan to oppose rain. Not to be outdone, Tony Blair's Labour Party announced an equally major initiative to meet the needs of a new, mythic electoral figure: the Schoolgate Mum, whose desires were said to include better school lunches, athletic activities and access to school nurses. This proved risible even to Labour Party stalwarts. "I thought we were going to call them Schoolgate Nans," said...
...This, then, is Tony Blair's last campaign for Prime Minister. He has won two terms; a third, to match Margaret Thatcher's stern trinity, would be unprecedented for a member of the Labour Party. Win or lose-and he is likely to win-Blair will be remembered as an imposing figure, the man who saved the British left from socialist irrelevance. His "New" Labour has proved a more lasting achievement than Bill Clinton's "New" Democrats. It is a majority party that has combined prudent free-market economics with increased spending on social programs and a notable, if still...
...accept that there is a trust issue?" the BBC's Jeremy Paxman asked Blair in an interview last week. Blair agreed but clumsily tried to spin it toward "trusting" Labour to sustain Britain's strong economy. Paxman, a brilliant barracuda, would have none of that: "All right, let's look at Iraq. When you told Parliament that the intelligence was 'extensive, detailed and authoritative,' that wasn't true, was it?" It took Blair some minutes of squirming before he could get around to making the case that Iraq was better off without Saddam, that 8 million Iraqis had voted...
...them stay. He had to apologize for his creative airbrush. Besting the traditional kissing of babies, the Liberal Democrats' leader, Charles Kennedy, produced one, his first son, Donald - and then proceeded to make sloppy campaign appearances in an admittedly sleep-deprived state. And when Prime Minister Tony Blair launched Labour's manifesto flanked by six Cabinet ministers all standing at space-age lecterns, one question was inevitable: "Who is the weakest link?" - a reference to the TV game show where the worst-performing contestants get voted off. The reporter suggested it might be Blair himself, whose popularity has been flagging...
...police." The association of police chiefs criticized the Tories' use of crime statistics, and Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said he hoped the campaign would not become "a competition about who can most effectively frighten voters." But Howard's appeals to popular anger are designed to capitalize on Labour's most acute vulnerability: low turnout. The British Elections Study ( BES), a highly respected academic probe of voter behavior, has just completed face-to-face interviews with some 3,000 people. Using the same methodology that correctly predicted the 2001 turnout at 59%, it's pegging a drop...