Will Tony Blair win a third term?

The guardian has this link on Mr Blair, giving him great confidence:
I guess he thinks he can dump the iraq war on the UN and be
politically rid of it... wow.

Third Blair win foreseen by computer

Kamal Ahmed, political editor
Sunday March 21, 2004
The Observer

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/polls/story/0,11030,1174636,00.html

When even the Economist is predicting that Tony Blair could be ousted at the next election, maybe it is time for Downing Street to start worrying. With Gordon Brown rampant, maybe the current resident of Number 10 knows his time is running short.

Not quite. A remarkable computer analysis predicting the result of the next election reveals that the Prime Minister has little to fear.

The simulation of an election held in May 2005, the most likely date of the next election, reveals that Blair is likely to win with a majority of 113. The sizeable landslide will be at the expense of the Conservatives, who will pick up fewer than 30 extra seats, and the Liberal Democrats, who will remain static on 52.

Will Tony Blair win a third term?

I think he loses around 100 seats total with the Torries picking up 85 or so and the Liberal Dems picking up 15.

eom.

When it's in the news, and especially Blair's role in it, the Labour vote goes down, and the Lib Dem goes up - presumably 'old' Labour voters who get so annoyed at Blair's actions that they defect. But then the vote creeps back to Labour if Iraq gets out of the headlines.

There used to be a 2 dimensional swingometer on the Daily Telegraph site, which translated percentage support for the big 3 parties into seats won. This never showed a Conservative victory, however bad the Labour numbers got, but it did sometimes show a hung Parliament over the past year.

Only solid proof that Blair knowingly lied to help start the invasion of Iraq is likely to bring him down. And I think he's too smart to have left that around.

A war he instigates can't touch him. He's the master.

It's not impressive at all sweetheart, it's actually rather dangerous.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,821179,00.html

It requires heroic weirdness these days for anyone with any ambition in any field, save perhaps the Daily Telegraph and the Tory party itself, actually to declare themselves a personal opponent of the government.

There may be occasional blips in the process. The audit commission has been resistant to the sliding of one Blairite, and perhaps a second, into its chairmanship. But who else would do? Where would you find one? Maybe the live-in partner of the arts minister, which is the status of the second candidate, is rather too flagrant a connection for a post peculiarly dependent on distance from government for its credibility. But the broad penumbra of public life, from which all such appointments are drawn, is now peopled exclusively by those who have made their number with the only orthodoxy they can see prevailing for many years ahead. Allegiance, in these days of apathy and opportunism, may not be strong. But it is all-pervasive.

This is an unhealthy, ultimately repellent, national condition, not found in any other western democracy. The one-party state of mind as well as politics doesn't seem to be making the country happier, or better governed. It is a direct, pernicious consequence of the collapse of the Tories as a political force. It has pretty well the entire establishment, for reasons of opportunism or comfort or idleness, in its grip.

With Blair's landslide majority of around 180 seats he just can't lose. :grr:

That's a major part of why "new" labour is so very out of touch and arrogant.

50% say yes, and 1/3 said "curse the bastard". I put that in for
humour's sake, and it turns out to expose the fragility of
blair's majority. Most of his "yes" vote is severely disappointed.

I said god bless him, cuz, geez, god save the queen. He's the man,
to not wish him better advised by god, is foolish. I hope he pulls
out his ear stoppers, listens to god and ends the war on drugs.

sad but true..

the Lib-Dem leader? He was in hospital, and then did not look well when he spoke last week to the LibDems. Meanwhile, the UK press is openly asking questions about his health --

I'd have to hoover away on the same search engines you have yourself.

Whilst i sincerely like the man, i think his fibre is more scottish
and that he would make a much better scottish politician, helping
bring change to holyrood. I just think his scottish highland culture
has little weight in london politics, and that a party operator
needs more connections to the grass roots.

We're locked in a time-portal here in britain. No change will
happen politically until tony blair leaves. The other party
politicians are not prime ministers, cuz they know they'll never
be in power. They will be remembered as "tony blair's opposition".

He's definitely not the full ticket.

I agree with Sweetheart, whilst I genuinely like Kennedy I fear he's not the man to seriously oppose Blair. He's too affable and a bit lightweight. I feel the Lib Dems need to find a firebrand. The only way Tony will be unseated will by political force being applied.

The Tories are clueless.

I envision the successor to charles kennedy, to be a midlands fire
brand for an english parliament. Such a person, would be positioned
to be far more influential in the homeland where the libdems must
gain weight. The inertia behind constitutional reform is stopped,
and it could see a reinvigorated by a hot libdem party. Such a
person would only come about, if they "KNEW" they could win power.
Its that sorta cart before the horse problem. Whilst not in power,
don't let your ace take the fall.

How are you doing?

I have to say we will never see a Brummie as Leader of a major political party or a Liverpudlian come to think of it. Unfortunately certain accents will still stop you from High Office ( IMO ).

oh well. I love the charm of the accents north of london, and
think they have a great way of appealing to british populism.

But the toffs have it you say. oh well. I still hear those
labour leaders voices echoing from the 70's, those regular labour
people who shut down the country. I heard these recordings on
an obscure video i rented. It struck me how much power the labour
leaders had in those times... Just they're not suitable wood,
for leadership? Labour is the party in power. To defeat them
with left populism, a common person would do fine, if they had
the gravitas and the intensity.

Oh well... bummer.

Regional stereotypes.

To these foreign eyes, all the regional stereotypes are equal,
just unique, though i must confess that glasgwegian is
incomprehensible and, for me, the most difficult one to understand
of the lot. I rank the accents on how well i can understand
them, as the closer to american english, is easier, and better
i understand.

Can you rank the following cities/places, in order of stereotype
best accepted in britain and most "approved", to least loved.

Cumbria
Newcastle
Chester
Lands End
Essex
Yorkshire
Kent
Brighton
Bath
Edinburgh
Manchester
Inverness
Isle of Skye
Leeds
Shetland

but with the list shown I fear I could end up making it too personal, and therefore not valid from your point of view. Some on the list don't really have a stereotype beyond general country/Town types (e.g. Shetland would be seen as farming, countryside = slow ). Others such as Essex have been the butt of jokes for 2 decades. Just type into google "essex jokes" and you'll get the idea. Most off the list above are not in the national psychi in such a way that it would affect someone from there more than in a light hearted jokey way. Indeed even to achieve power there are very few places where your background would really affect your chances of being a party leader. However being from Birmingham is one of those. Actually it is the accent that would do it. You could come from Birmingham and have a relatively neutral accent and do OK. The accent would invoke a stereotype of being slow, niave, friendly, and capable of building the Bull ring (the 60's version - this may not mean much). If you were from Liverpool, the image would be millitant left wing, and or a scally (again if you have the accent).

Sad really, as most of these stereotypes originate IMO from the South East. I bet it is a throughback to the days of empire, when Liverpool and Birmingham were vastly more important to the country than the are now. Manchester has a much better image, and I don't know why.

then the reputation of Essex is not so much mucky women as right-wingnut politicians such as Norman Tebbit. If we are going to talk about political geography then this article is probbably the best place to start. The tories and to a certain extent the Lib Dems have got it all to do to get out of their geographical ghetto's.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1054854,00.html

For in the mid-20th century, across the north of England the Tories appeared the natural party of government. Even as late as 1959, Conservatives held a majority of seats in the city of Liverpool. And even as class affiliations drove voters towards Labour, the pull of sectarian dogma meant the Conservative and Unionist party could always retain seats such as Everton. Yet all that is now history.

The 1997 Labour landslide topped a 20-year reversal in the Tories' northern fortunes. Margaret Thatcher's dismissal of one-nation as "no-nation" Conservatism, and her spiritual identification with Finchley and the garagistes of Basildon meant an ever-diminishing presence outside the Midlands marginals. Willie Whitelaw, the Cumbrian grandee, remains only as a ghostly reminder of lost Cavalier glories. The death of the Birkenhead Tory Barry Porter and Labour's consequent victory in the Wirral South byelection in February 1997 heralded Conservative immolation in Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield and, of course, Blackpool in the election later that year. When the young Labour researcher Chris Leslie took the Bradford suburb of Shipley from professional Yorkshireman Sir Marcus Fox, the game was up. Even middle-class Leeds North East, the platform for Keith Joseph's transformation of Conservatism, was lost. Traditional marginals - Darlington, Macmillan's Stockton, Tynemouth - became safe Labour seats.

The Tory party now has only 17 MPs in the north compared with 73 in the south-east. Until 2001, at least the identifiably northern leadership of William Hague meant that an appearance of geographical breadth could just about be maintained. With the sublimely southern Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford), even that has gone. The Tory frontbench sits as one of the least representative cabals in the party's modern history. When Theresa May (Maidenhead), Michael Howard (Folkestone) and Damian Green (Ashford) speak for England, it is a very small corner of England indeed. Wales and Scotland have long since been ceded.

All of which makes Conservative aspirations to be a party of government the more illusory. Bar the odd exception, the modern Tory party has become a southern rump whose heartland is contained within the M25 (but outside central London) and whose democratic legitimacy barely extends beyond Staffordshire.

the electoral results, and it so impressed me that the entire
countryside is tory and the citys are labour. (inside england).

Scotland is a tory-free zone... :party:

I'm afraid, if the libdems can't get their act together, nobody will
be around to show labour an opposition.

Mainly that they need to break out of the South-West of England.

They have one or two studenty seats such as Colchester and my old stomping ground of Sheffield Hallam these days but they still have a lot to do, which is not suprising as they are a 3rd party. Here's a good article about the tories which mentions Sheffield Hallam anyway for good luck. The other main problem for the tories of course is that they tend to be very very old.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,805250,00.html

he has absolutely nothing to worry about IMO.

We will know more after the European elections in the summer.

V

If the Euro elections are like last time then the tories will campaign on European matters and will mobilize the euro-sceptic vote in a big way. However,that Euro success did not turn into general election success for the tories in 2001 as people vote for different issues in general elections.

People tend to vote more on European matters in european elections and more on national matters in the general election. Hence the two sets of elections are likely to produce very different results. I would tip the tories to do well in June but certainly not for the general election.

they will be a good guide as far as the far left parties go. Expecially for RESPECT, it will be a chance to gauge their level of support, and whether or not they should bother standing in the general election.

Also, the turnout will be interesting. Euro elections have historically low turnouts but this time could be the lowest ever - I wouldn't be surprised if the turnout fails to make double figures in some places.

V

...you can vote for Blair or the conserative! I admit, I'm not well versed in their system...but it seems they need a primary to get rid of Blair and run someone with liberal views. Or they need a strong third party alternative that can actually win. Maybe we can get a voice coach to teach Nader a nice cockney accent and ship him over there to run!!!

A powerful populist person in the lib-dem seat could transform the
country through opposition.

charles kennedy could form an alliance with the SNP and take over
as the first minister of scotland with a libdem/SNP alliance. This
would be a feather in his cap indeed, and do far more to further
the causes he purports to be leading. The victory in scotland would
synergize with a revival of populist non-war, liberal populism.
The libdems could unseat blair, if they played all the cards in
their hand at the right positions on the board.

... but this time with a bit better planning & delivery ...

I predict that he will squeak through with a minority government. However, if he waits until after the US election to go to the polls he will lose big time. (IE When GWB goes down, TB goes with him). Look for Tony to call an early election.

Blair will win a third term, he would have cantered to it had Iain Duncan Smith remained Tory leader, Michael Howard appears to worry him more, but the odds are massively in favor of Blair.

Charles Kennedy seems to be disintegrating daily in front of our eyes. The hoped-for Lib Dem surge to become the official opposition appears to have stalled now the Tories actually seem to have got their act together a bit. Kennedy's alleged health and confidence problems have got an awful lot of press in Britain this week. I feel sorry for him.

My guess is that Blair wins a third term, with a significantly reduced majority (but still a comfortable one), then 2 years in, he retires (ill health possibly being the reason) and Gordon Brown finally takes over. (Not that there was ever a deal, of course, oh, lordy, lordy, no...)