Conservatives throwing in the towel?

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, JUNE 2. With opinion polls relentlessly predicting an overwhelming Labour victory in next week's general election, the Tories have started to crack up and for the first time there were signs of that sinking feeling at the very highest level of the party leadership.

The Iron Lady, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, who once famously said ``we never lost'', was the first to throw in the towel when she warned of a Labour landslide saying it would lead to an ``elective dictatorship''. This was echoed by the party chief, Mr. William Hague, who had until now refused to take note of opinion polls dismissing them as no substitute for ``real'' people, casting ``real'' votes in a ``real'' election.

In a significant departure from his gung-ho script, he said in an T.V. interview that a brute majority for Labour would be bad for the country.

``It would be extremely dangerous for this country for a repetition of that majority,'' he said acknowledging that the 1997 debacle when his party suffered one of its most humiliating defeats could repeat itself. There was no longer any talk of ``we would be in No 10 on June 8''.

Mrs. Thatcher, writing in The Daily Telegraph, warned that a large majority for Labour was a ``risk too far'' at a time when the country was fighting to keep its independence from a European superstate.

``I applaud strong government but not overweening government sustained by cronies, ciphers and a personality cult. I very much fear that if Mr. Blair is returned with a large majority these already detectable tendencies will grow unchecked...that is a risk too far,'' she said underlining the danger of an ``elective dictatorship'' which was how she saw a Blair government in its second term in office.

Even The Daily Telegraph, was uncharacteristically despondent, admitting in an editorial that if the ``opinion polls are right they (Tories) may even lose constituencies that they held in the debacle of 1997 when they were reduced to a rump of 165 seats.'' It said that a ``lynch mob,'' comprising Labour, Liberal Democrats and Eurocrats, was screaming for Tory blood and it would not be content with simply defeating the party but wanted it to be ``seen to crushed by a wide margin.'' ``Like a lynch mob attack in the Middle East, mere execution of the victim is not quite enough: the steaming heart of the slain must be held aloft for all to see,'' it said gravely.

The Labour, however, tended to smell a rat in this sudden display of Tory low self-esteem and the Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair called it a ploy to frighten people into not voting in order to ``depress'' the Labour majority.

He said it was ``extraordinary'' that Tories were effectively telling people that either they vote for them nor vote at all because otherwise Labour would win a big majority. Incidentally, reservations about a steamroller majority have been expressed even by traditional Old Labour veterans such as Mr. Roy Hattersley who fear that a strong opposition is important in a healthy democracy.

The panic in the Tory camp - its public demonstration to be more precise - coincided with increasingly conflicting voices in the party over the party's campaign strategy. Mr. Hague has been criticised for concentrating too much on Euro turning it virtually into a single-issue campaign whereas opinion polls indicate that a majority of voters are more concerned about bread-and-butter issues, particularly the state of public services.

Party leaders, including those who share his views on single currency, have objected to his attempt to turn the election into a referendum on Euro - and he has been forced to back down on his recent statements warning people that the election was the last chance to save the pound.

The statements, his critics argued, sent out a wrong signal that the party would not continue its fight to ``keep the pound'' after the election. The fact, they pointed out, was that there would be a referendum on single currency and the party would campaign for a ``no'' vote.

Meanwhile, as signs of a post-election challenge to Mr. Hague's leadership began to appear, a cartoon in The Guardian in which a ``U.N.'' peacekeeper is guarding the Conservative Party office hinted at the shape of things to come.

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