LONDON, May 4 (UPI) -- The Labor Party of British Prime Minister Tony Blair is set to suffer a humiliating defeat in the local elections being held across England Thursday. But the central question is whether the result will be bad enough to trigger a parliamentary rebellion that forces him to resign.
This is most unlikely. The results will not be fully known until Friday, and with a low voter turnout split among five serious parties, the verdict of the voters is likely to be confusing and even contradictory.
The headline verdict could be "Blair Defeat." Or it could be "Liberal Surge." Or it could be "Conservative Recovery." If the polls in Oxford are correct, the headline could even read "Greens Win Control of First City." And the headline that many politicians of all parties fear is "BNP Shock Success," if the anti-immigration extremists of the British National Party do as well as some polls suggest.
This should be kept in proportion. Some 23 million people, out of a total population of 60 million, are entitled to vote. Almost a quarter of the council seats in England -- 4,361 out of 19,579 -- are at stake in 176 local governments, including every borough council seat in London.
And the BNP is contesting just 363 of them, which means that the publicity they have already enjoyed far outweighs their real political presence. But there are signs of panic about their growing appeal. Ken Livingstone, the Labor mayor of London, has appealed to traditional Labor voters that even if they cannot bring themselves to vote Labor, they should at least switch their vote to "one of the respectable parties, rather than the racists of the BNP."
Gordon Brown, chancellor of the exchequer and Blair's rival and almost certain heir, challenged the BNP's use of the Union Jack, the traditional national flag.
"The BNP should not have ownership of the British flag. It's a flag for the British people, and when people think about the Union Jack it's a flag of inclusiveness and it's a flag of fairness and we should oppose the sectarianism and the racism of the BNP," Brown said this week.
"We have got to go out and explain to people that a party that is posing as a champion of British people is actually attacking the basic rights of a large number of people who are very much part of our country."
Labor Party canvassers returning from the nation's doorsteps have been delivering stunned reports of a surge of support for the BNP, not only on the highly charged issue of immigration, but also because voters say they like the BNP's tough stance on crime and housing, and are disgusted by the latest surge of scandals besetting the Labor government.
"Don't let nine days of headlines undo nine years of achievement," Blair pleaded.
But the last nine days have seen his health minister booed by nurses, his deputy prime minister caught up in a tawdry sex scandal and police inquiries into allegations that peerages have been "sold" in return for donations to Labor funds and causes. Moreover, his hapless Home Secretary Charles Clarke is having to explain why over 1,000 foreign criminals released from prison had been set free rather than deported. They include rapists and murderers, including one Somali refugee who is suspected of killing a woman police constable.
Labor Party officials, fearing that many of their traditional voters will not turn out to show their dismay with the Iraq war, now expect to lose as many as 400 of the 4,361 seats at stake. They expect to lose most of the London boroughs and to lose control of 15 cities across England, with lasting effects on the party's grassroots organization. They also fear that they could be knocked into third place in the share of votes cast, behind the Conservatives and the Liberal-Democrats.
This would be bad, but not necessarily lethal for Blair. Local government results have no direct impact on Blair's solid majority in Parliament.
It is the psychological impact that matters, and since Blair has already declared that he will not fight another election, he is already a lame duck. The only question is whether he steps down sooner or later, and the defeat in Thursday's elections is likely to persuade many Labor MPs that the sooner he goes the better. So all eyes are turning to his almost inevitable successor, Gordon Brown, a dour Scotsman whose broadly successful stewardship of the British economy is turning sour as taxes and public spending are rising ominously.
Brown moved this week to distance himself from the atmosphere of sleaze that now surrounds the Blair administration like a bad smell. He is backing a proposal for an independent body to investigate allegations of misconduct by government ministers, and has twice failed to appear at Prime Minister's Question Time in the House of Commons to provide an impression of support for Blair.
Blair, understandably, wants to depart on something of a high note, whether the installation of a stable power-sharing government in Northern Ireland, sufficient progress in Iraq to justify the withdrawal of British troops or some other plausible success to cover his departure. Such a triumph may well prove elusive, and after Thursday's elections his Labor Party is likely to reckon his legacy in the devastation of their base in local government, the rise of the far right and a mounting chorus demanding to know when will he finally go.
