Sunday, April 16, 2006

Britons Feeling 'Tired of Tony'

WaPo reports Former Fans Call Blair Out of Touch.... "I want to like him. I just can't anymore," said Hannah Lloyd, 35, a lawyer and mother of three, who said she was dazzled by Blair when he rode into office with Britain's biggest margin of victory in a century. Now, she said, sipping coffee in an Islington cafe, the televised face she once found exciting seems "rather smug."
He has been a good friend to the US, but he is a leftist, and he gets more of his support from the conservatives than from his own party.
When Blair was elected at the age of 43, the youngest prime minister since 1812, "He walked on water, it was like he could do no wrong," said Ben Page, director of the Ipsos MORI polling firm. Now his approval ratings have fallen to just over 30 percent. Nearly half of people polled by the London newspaper the Times this month wanted Blair to resign now or by the end of the year. Fifty-seven percent agreed that "Blair had run out of steam and is unlikely to achieve anything else as prime minister."

Maybe it is because his own left base has turned against him, and now is is losing conservative support because of this Scotsman reported Blair has told George Bush that Britain cannot offer military support to any strike on Iran, regardless of whether the move wins the backing of the international community, government sources claimed yesterday.

Amid increasing tension over Tehran's attempts to develop a military nuclear capacity, the Prime Minister has laid bare the limits of his support for President Bush, who is believed to be considering an assault on Iran, Foreign Office sources revealed.


Could it be that he is just afraid of this: Times of London reported Iran has formed battalions of suicide bombers to strike at British and American targets if the nation’s nuclear sites are attacked. According to Iranian officials, 40,000 trained suicide bombers are ready for action.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, you have no understanding of British politics, huh? Blair has lost support in part because he's been such a "good friend" to the US - because his interpretation of "good friend" seems to equal "mindless lapdog". The British, amazingly, don't like being dragged into war against their will, nearly against the will of Parliament, even, because the US President decrees it so. Conservatives or otherwise. The point is that British conservatives (or even Conservatives) are not like American conservatives. The Republican party in the US has no mainstream equivalent in the UK. The majority of us? Find them frightening as all hell. Just like the rest of Europe. Blair's partial identification with them - praying in public being the worrying symbol of that - is the problem. His pulling back from the insane idea of attacking Iran is a last-ditch attempt to salvage both conservative and liberal support, not the reason he's lost it.

Don Singleton said...

"mindless lapdog"

You reveal what your political leanings are with that statement.

praying in public being the worrying symbol of that - is the problem.

You should try it some time

insane idea of attacking Iran

What is more insane is allowing them to develop nuclear weapons, which would immediately be used to start The Final War.

Anonymous said...

You reveal what your political leanings are with that statement.

Yeah. I'm a Tory, i.e. a British Conservative. Look it up.

Don Singleton said...

Yes the group that supported the PM much better than his own party.