The English local elections

Here, from the Times of London's ever perceptive Gerard Baker, is pretty much all you need to know about today's English local elections and the effect they might have on the tenure of Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Labor had a terrible day a week ago Wednesday when scandals of different sorts, which Baker adroitly references, broke on three Labor ministers: Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, Home Secretary Charles Clarke, and Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt. As Baker notes, parties in power in Westminster tend to do poorly in local elections, just as parties holding the White House tend to do poorly in state and local elections in this country: Voters instinctively reach for some kind of balance. And so local elections are not just a proxy for approval or disapproval of the party in power.

Nevertheless, a dismal result could prompt demands for Blair's resignation. In the run-up to the May 2005 election, he stated that it would be the last he would contest as party leader. That led everyone to expect that he would resign sometime before 2009 and be succeeded by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown. Parliamentary elections in Britain are for a term of five years, but parties in power typically call an election for the fourth year. Remaining in power another year is taken as a sign of weakness, as indeed it was when Conservative Prime Minister John Major chose to do so in 1997, and in the fifth year of a government leaders of the opposition party are entitled to be briefed by civil servants, which means that they have a much better command of the facts and minutiae of government.

As Baker notes, Blair will not be ejected from his position in the same way Margaret Thatcher was in 1990. The Conservative Party has rules that allow a minority of MPs to force an election for party leader. The Labor Party does not. Moreover, the Conservative Party has a culture of nastiness and viciousness that I have not seen elsewhere, certainly not in either of the two major parties in the United States or the Labor Party in Britain. Which is not to say that politicians in these other parties are nice to one another. But Conservatives are truly vicious. For evidence, read the diaries of the rakish Conservative MP Alan Clark.

Diaries: Into Politics: Into Politics Vol 2

Diaries: In Power

The Last Diaries: In and Out of the Wilderness

The late Conservative politician Enoch Powell once noted that "all political careers end in failure." Alas, it seems that Tony Blair's political career, so shining in many respects, is going to end in something like failure before too long. If it does we should not forget his achievements—making Labor a governing party once again, keeping the British economy vibrant (with much of the heavy work done by Gordon Brown), leading the way against tyranny in Bosnia and Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He has been a leader of extraordinary impact, however the English vote in their local elections today.