Labour's Historic Win

THE GENERAL ELECTION verdict in Britain is both an endorsement of the policies of Mr. Tony Blair's New Labour Government and a rejection, in unambiguous terms, of the opposition Conservatives' catastrophic attempt to try and capture power by taking extremist stances. There were several reasons why the Labour tide had proved unstoppable, the party of the left being returned to power for a second term for the first time in history. The most striking of these reasons must be the failure of the Tory opposition to focus on the issues that mattered most to the voter - issues of health, education and public services - rather than, as it did, on the twin issue of the single European currency and sovereignty. A campaign that never really took off, or generated heat save on the last few days when racist prejudices were sought to be stirred up, has been capped by the lowest recorded voter turnout, a voter apathy that seems to be afflicting all democracies around the world. In the case of Britain, this apathy was understandable because the country is just recovering from the two disasters of unprecedented floods and the foot and mouth disease which has laid to waste large swathes of the countryside.

Four years ago, Mr. Blair steered his party away from left wing radicalism, grabbed the vacant political centre ground and rode to victory with an impressive majority, ending 18 long years of Conservative domination. Promising to continue on the path - the party is believed by many to have failed to live up to the expectations roused by the euphoria then - the Prime Minister stuck to the campaign theme of moderation, seeking a vote to go on with the job. The party's campaign exploited the incumbency advantage and concentrated on the Government's not inconsiderable achievements in the areas of health and education. The Tories countered by plunging farther to the right. This has proved a fatal mistake. Their agenda was too narrowly, certainly too divisively focussed. The party under the non-charismatic Mr. William Hague made a strategic misjudgment by deciding to play on British fears of a strong federal Europe that could one day swallow everything British and attempted to revive the ghost of Enoch Powell by playing on fears that Britain is about to be drowned in a tidal wave of immigrants. The party leadership, reinforced at later stages by the redoubtable Lady Thatcher, refused to accept that elections are not won on foreign or constitutional issues, that the euro, the common European currency which Britain will ultimately adopt, and asylum were low on the voters' priority. The Thatcherite stridency and aggression were ill suited to the times and went poorly with the man leading the party. The most enduring image of the campaign, in fact, is that of a Labour poster that depicts Mr. Hague topped by Baroness Thatcher's hair.

A liberal Government in Britain can be a powerful voice for peace in a time of rapid global changes. The second landslide for New Labour can herald a period of progressive rule in Europe and comes with the decisive defeat of the Conservatives, who had dominated the political scene during much of the last century. As the Tories reinvent themselves, Mr. Hague and company must share the responsibility for enabling the far right British National Party to secure a shockingly large number of votes in the two Oldham constituencies which were the scene of race riots last week. Among the lessons the Tories can learn from the election is that the world has had enough of the cancer of xenophobia, that whipping up anti-immigrant rhetoric may buy some votes but can cause great national damage and that the immigrant brings into the country as much good as he gets.

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