Blair faces party anguish

A humbled Prime Minister Tony Blair returns Saturday to Britain to answer critics in his own party after voter backlash against his support for war in Iraq brought an unprecedented trouncing in local elections.

Blair’s aides tried to put the best possible spin on the election defeats while he attended the funeral of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan in Washington. But more than 460 Labour officials were voted out of local government, and Blair will have to convince party members with seats in Parliament that they will not suffer the same fate in a general election likely next year.

“I’d like to say I’m sorry to the [local] councillors who’ve lost their seats,” Blair told reporters in Washington before heading home. “I think Iraq has been a shadow over our support.”

But he said he was as determined as ever to stay on and expected that Iraq would become less of a liability as news improved with a U.N.-endorsed plan to restore sovereignty.

Blair supported the U.S. drive to invade Iraq despite strong opposition within his own party.

Unprecedented third-place showing
Ruling parties in Britain often do poorly in local elections only to bounce back and win in national polls. But for the first time, Blair’s Labour Party did not even manage to come in second. Its 26 percent left it behind both the main opposition Conservatives and the strongly antiwar Liberal Democrats, traditionally the smaller third party.

Labour’s majority in Parliament under Blair has been so big that he would still control the chamber even if scores of his party colleagues were to lose their seats in next year’s election.

Party rules make it difficult to remove him as leader, but as more Labour lawmakers fear for their own jobs, there have been growing calls for a new party leader — and therefore a new prime minister — to fight the election. Gordon Brown, Blair’s ambitious chancellor of the exchequer, or finance minister, has been waiting in the wings.

Most Labour figures, while acknowledging a need to learn from what Blair’s deputy, John Prescott, called a “kicking,” fell well shy of calling for Blair’s scalp.

But former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who quit the Cabinet in protest at the plans for war, said voters who deserted Labour over Iraq would stay away as long as Blair led it.

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Clare Short, another outspoken Labour rebel, said voters were punishing Blair because his party could not.

“What we did in Iraq has brought disgrace and dishonor on Britain around the world. As Tony Blair won’t change the policy, the only way to make a correction is for him to step aside from the leadership,” she told the Evening Standard newspaper.

Livingstone holds on as mayor of London
The one bright spot for Labour in this week’s election was the re-election of the popular Ken Livingstone as London’s mayor, announced Friday night. But even that was a dubious endorsement for Blair, since the maverick Livingstone led massive street protests against the Iraq war.

Blair faces more expected bad news Sunday when delayed results for Thursday’s vote for the European Parliament are released.

Opinion polls suggest that fringe parties opposed to deeper integration with the European Union will do well. That may hurt the opposition Conservatives more than Blair in the short term, but it bodes ill for him in the year ahead.

The prime minister has pledged to sign a new constitution for the European Union and then lobby voters to support it in a referendum, even though most Britons disapprove of the idea.