WASHINGTON, May 7 (UPI) -- Second of five parts.
After 80 years as the standing joke of British politics, the old Liberal Party, these days known as the Liberal Democrats, is rising fast, thanks to the complacent foolishness of Britain's veteran "Big Two" parties, Conservative and Labor.
In the last two general elections of 1997 and 2001, the Liberal Democrats, or "Lib Dems," now led by Charles Kennedy, achieved the best showing for their party or the venerable Liberals whom they succeeded in 70 years. While still trailing a far third in numbers of members in the House of Commons, the main chamber of the British Parliament. They were clearly a force on the rise.
Prime Minister Tony Blair, the man who recreated the long stumbling Labor Party as the apparently invincible "New" Labor was delighted at this. For Blair's long-term, ambitious project was to radicalize British society by sidelining the long-dominant Conservative Party or Tories into permanent third place, with the "tame" Lib Dems promoted into the position of main opposition.
In the last two general elections, this strategy seemed to work brilliantly. Blair treated Kennedy and the Lib Dems for years with respect while treating the Tories as if they did not exist. As a result, over the past six years of Blair's time as prime minister, Kennedy has usually appeared on British national television as a more commanding and confident figure than successive Tory leaders William Hague and Iain Duncan-Smith. And Blair was rewarded by seeing the Lib Dems take huge chunks out of the Tory vote in its old suburban middle-class strongholds across the South and Midlands of England.
He was helped immensely by the complacent incompetence of William Hague during his ill-starred four years as Tory leader.
Hague and his inner circle, in whom dissent was, to put it mildly discouraged, believed that Blair's New Labor landslide of 1997 and the huge, even unprecedented inroads that the centrist-Liberal Democrats made then was a freak event, and one time only anomaly that was an angry protest against the Conservatives' previous record-breaking 18 years in power and four successive general election victories since 1979.
Even if they lost the next election to Blair and New Labor, Hague and his strategists believed, they would regain between 50 to 100 of the parliamentary seats they had lost in 1997 to Labor and also drive back the Lib Dems to the fringes of British politics.
However it did not work out that way. In the May 2001 general election, both New Labor and the Lib Dems held on to every huge gain they had both made in 1997. Hague was quickly forced out and a new Tory Party leader, Duncan-Smith took over to try and reverse the leftwing and liberal tide. Often he appeared to have as much impact as King Canute trying to turn back the waves.
All this was welcome news to Blair and his own strategists at 10 Downing Street. But the results of last Thursday's local government elections suggest in building up the Liberal Democrats he may well have created a Frankenstein monster that in the long run will prove far more devastating to his own Labor Party than to the Conservatives.
For Kennedy and his Lib Dems pulled off four highly significant coups in the local government polls last week.
First, they won a whopping 30 percent of the total vote, as many as Labor itself. No one had dreamed they would -- or could -- do so well. The Conservatives, starting from a far higher natural base, made three times as many gains in new council seats captured across Britain -- 600 to the Lib Dems' 200. But almost none of the Conservative gains came at the expense of the Lib Dems.
Second, the pattern of voting suggested the Lib Dems still had an excellent chance of hanging on to most if not all of the important parliamentary seats they had taken from the Tories in suburban and middle class districts in 1997 and 2001. And as long as they can hold on to those new strongholds, the Tories look fated to stay in the political wilderness and lose their third straight general election in a row, something they have not experienced in 93 years since 1910.
Third, while the Lib Dems hung on to the gains, and pattern of gains, they had made from the Conservatives in the last two general parliamentary elections, the additional new gains they made in winning council seats and shares of local government power across Britain came from Labor instead.
This suggests that while the Lib Dems have gained about as much as they can from the Conservatives, they are now poised to make highly significant inroads into the New Labor vote that is the basis of Blair's power.
Blair and other Labor leaders never expected this. The Lib Dems' rise was supposed to be at the Conservatives' expense, not theirs. But there are strong indications that now it is "New' Labor not the Conservatives who are going to be the most vulnerable to further Lib Dem gains.
For opinion polls have repeatedly shown that British voters, while still generally cool and skeptical towards the Tories under Duncan-Smith, have become disenchanted with Blair and New Labor as well.
Although Blair has thrown billions of pounds sterling at Britain's appalling National Health and public education systems since being reelected two years ago, he has shown no skill or ability at all in knowing what to actually do with the money. The quality of British public services, including public transportation remains execrable, and it is steadily getting worse not better with the government giving no sign it knows what to do about it.
To make matters even worse, the fierce public debate over Blair's support for the U.S. toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq revived old fissures in Labor long thought to have disappeared. Now, around 120 members of Blair's huge, more than 400 strong parliamentary majority is tending toward a state of permanent rebellion against his more moderate "Third Way " policies. If this profound split between Blair's "New" Labor and this emerging "Old" wing of the party committed to more radical and socialist policies should persist and intensify, a full-scale defection of voters to Kennedy and his Lib Dems will be far more likely.
Fourth, the Lib Dem local government voting gains came last week mainly in inner cities, where New Labor policies are most clearly seen to have failed. And they included a very large defection of voters from Britain's more than two million strong Muslim immigrant communities which previously had been rock solid for Labor. The immediate cause for their defection was anger again at Blair's commitment of Britain to the Iraq war. And that protest vote looks likely to stay firmly in Lib Dem hands as Duncan Smith and the Tories also supported the war.
Finally, over the past six years, most Conservative hard-core loyalists have complacently believed that votes for the Lib Dems would melt away and return to them if or when some serious crisis struck. But there are still no signs of that happening.
On the contrary, Kennedy is now a far more familiar and commanding presence on British television screens than Duncan-Smith and he has been there far longer. And he looks likely to outperform Blair's most likely successor, Chancellor of the Exchequer, or Finance Minister Gordon Brown if, as expected, he should succeed Blair as prime minister.
Through most of the 20th century, the old Liberals and their successors got used to making apparently spectacular gains in midterm parliamentary by-elections and local government races as protest votes, only to see their hopes vanish like the morning dew when general parliamentary election time came around. For then, the British people always reverted to their two "serious" choices - the Conservatives and Labor.
But over the past six years, Kennedy and his Lib Dems have held on to their unprecedented gains and now are making new and even more unexpected ones.
A new non-socialist radical movement may be rising in Britain. And having mauled the Conservatives, it is now sinking its claws into Blair and New Labor, the very allies who nurtured it.
Next: Blair's Baghdad backlash
