From the Guardian
Unlimited (UK)
Dated Friday May 6
Tony Blair alone bears the blame
The prime minister cannot long survive this election
By Polly Toynbee
The story of the night is the defection from Labour by those marching over to the Lib Dems - and some even to the Tories. Labour MPs never believed those opinion polls giving them an eight or 10 point lead. What they found on the doorsteps was profound anger focused on the person of Tony Blair himself. Today, he alone bears the blame for this haemorrhage of seats.
Tony Blair tried to persuade himself that the Iraq war was a chattering class obsession, but it was everywhere, even among those who usually pay scant attention to foreign policy. It became the symbol and the icon for any disappointment or grievance with the government over the last eight years. It all came down on Tony Blair's head.
At door after door, the voters said: "No, not Tony Blair". Those who never followed the minute details of "who said what when" came to believe the war was wrong, the country was cheated and had been wrongly dragged against its will to fight George Bush's war on a false prospectus. This was a khaki election.
The man who once was the great architect of Labour's rescue from 18 wilderness years is today the man who alone takes the blame for so many lost seats. He cannot long survive this, for he alone dragged his reluctant party to places they did not want to go - above all to Iraq.
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