Blair Wins, but His Party Loses Ground

British voters gave Prime Minister Tony Blair a historic third consecutive term in office Thursday but also sharply rebuked him over his Iraq policy, reducing his parliamentary majority and putting his political future in doubt.

At 4:30 a.m., more than six hours after polls closed, Blair was assured of becoming the first Labor prime minister to win a third consecutive term in his party’s 105-year history. Labor, however, emerged with a much weakened position, losing scores of seats in Parliament, according to early results.

The extent of the apparent losses triggered doubts from many politicians and political analysts that Blair, who celebrates his 52nd birthday today, would be able to serve out a full four-year term. They expect Blair will face pressure to hand off leadership of his party and the government to Gordon Brown, Britain’s finance minister, perhaps as early as this year.

“This is the end of the Blair era,” said Martin Farr, a political historian at Newcastle University. “There will be a workable majority, but it is severely limited.”

In a brief address in northeastern England, Blair tried to analyze the unfolding results. “It seems as if it’s clear ... that the British people wanted the return of the Labor government but with a reduced majority, and we have to respond to that sensibly and wisely and responsibly,” he said.

“We have to make sure that we focus on the things that matter to people ... jobs and living standards, the National Health Service and law and order, and the problems we have in some of our communities.”

Blair spoke after being declared the winner of the parliamentary seat in his Sedgefield voting district, beating 14 other candidates, including one whose son was killed in the war in Iraq.

“Iraq has been a divisive issue for this country, but I hope now we can unite again and look to the future here and there,” Blair told supporters.

According to exit polls, voters abandoned the Labor Party in droves, with the disaffected splitting their votes between the Conservative Party led by Michael Howard, who labeled Blair a “liar” during the campaign, and the Liberal Democrats under Charles Kennedy, who said Blair had exercised bad judgment in going to war.

Minor candidates also received significant support in key races. In one high-profile East London race, a new party called Respect, led by ex-Labor firebrand George Galloway, toppled Labor incumbent Oona King by appealing to antiwar passions among immigrant Muslim voters.

Howard, who comfortably won his home district of Folkestone, congratulated Blair early today and said he would give him “full support” if Blair delivered on “the things that really matter to the British people.” With Conservatives increasing their strength in Parliament, Howard took comfort in what he portrayed as a “significant step toward our recovery.”

“We have sent a message to Mr. Blair, and in the next Parliament we will be able to form a stronger opposition,” he said.

Lord Thomas Strathclyde, the Conservative leader in the House of Lords, said Labor had won in part because during the campaign it “managed to demonstrate that Blair and Brown could come together as a partnership” between Labor’s rival wings.

But he questioned whether that alliance was authentic: “Over the next few weeks, the British people will see whether or not that is true.”

Former Home Secretary David Blunkett, a Blair loyalist, tried to put the best face on the results. He said it was not surprising that a governing party would give up seats after eight years in power. But he said the results showed that people still wanted to be ruled by Labor.

“I think an unprecedented third time for the Labor Party and a clear majority will be an endorsement of the direction we have been taking,” he said.

Many voters rapped Blair over his decision to join President Bush in invading Iraq in March 2003. Critics said Blair exaggerated prewar intelligence and was dishonest in making the case for war.

“Labor is getting a bit of a bruising, and more than the exit polls are predicting,” said Zig Layton-Henry, a professor of politics at Warwick University. “I think Blair will have trouble handling his party because there are a lot of disgruntled Labor voters out there.”

He said party members had “defected because of the war and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction.”

On the stump, Blair boasted of a strong economy and his government’s doubling of spending on education and national health. He told voters that he stood by his decision to go to war after Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein failed to comply with United Nations resolutions. And he cited intelligence reports he received at the time that said Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

The exit polls forecast that Labor won a 37% share of the vote, with the main opposition Conservatives getting 33% and the Liberal Democrats 22%. The Conservatives supported Blair’s decision to send thousands of British troops to Iraq. The Liberal Democrats opposed the war. Labor’s share of the popular vote appeared to be the smallest in British history for a winning party.

There were 645 parliamentary seats at stake in the vote. In the first 566 races announced, 333 were won by Labor candidates, 169 by Conservatives, 52 by Liberal Democrats and 12 by other parties.

Going into the election, Labor held a 161-seat margin in Parliament based on its landslide victory behind Blair in 2001. The exit poll indicated that could fall to a 66-seat edge. Later projections by the BBC and Sky News, based on results, said that the Labor margin might end up being halved, to about 80 seats.

That would normally be a comfortable governing margin. But in a Parliament in which as many as 60 Labor members are opposed to Blair’s support of the war and were thought to be loyal to Brown, the prime minister appeared to be entering dangerous political straits.

After winning in his parliamentary district, Brown, whose Cabinet post is akin to the U.S. Treasury secretary, seemed self-assured, emphasizing Labor’s historic win. He said the aim of the next Labor government would be “to maintain our economic stability and prosperity, to advance the work of the party for a country where every child has the best start in life and where there is security of opportunity for every person.”

“The result is much better than the Conservatives thought they were going to get,” Mark Wickham-Jones, a senior lecturer in politics at Bristol University, told Reuters news agency.

“There is a sense in which this election has been a referendum on Blair, and I think it is going to leave him considerably weakened,” he said. “My guess is it really hastens Blair’s departure.... He may not be there at Christmas.”

There was little doubt that much of Labor’s difficulties emanated from Blair’s controversial decision to join the United States in invading Iraq. The issue came to dominate his reelection bid even as he struggled to keep the campaign focused on economic successes and generally popular social policies.

“Any Labor candidate who has been out there talking to the public, listening to people on the doorstep, will have heard that the war has made an impact,” said Robin Cook, Labor’s former foreign secretary who quit the party leadership and went to the Parliament back benches because he opposed the war.

Cook, speaking on British TV, said he had encountered former Blair supporters who said they had to vote against him in his parliamentary district to show their opposition to the war. Another Labor dissident and Blair critic, Clare Short, said the party might be better off with a reduced majority.

“If there was a little bit more discussion and respect for Parliament and all the different opinions in the Labor Party, it might actually improve the policy of the government,” she said on Sky Television.

Howard’s Conservative Party had hoped to capitalize on its tough stances against crime, immigration and the “nanny state” in order to begin to stage a comeback from its disastrous showing in the last two elections against Blair and his centrist New Labor policies.

But early returns were indicating a stronger swing to the Liberal Democrats, the country’s third-ranked political party, which had hoped that protest votes against the war would help it to its best showing ever.

Going to the polls Thursday in Labor’s stronghold London constituency of North Islington, Moira Mooney, who has lived in the area for 30 years, said she voted Labor “reluctantly because of the war in Iraq.”

But Siobhan Ryan, 34, a primary school teacher, said she had switched her vote from Labor to the Liberal Democrats. “I will never vote Labor while Tony Blair is head of the party,” she said.