Three wheels on his wagon … but New Labour keeps rolling along

Three wheels on his wagon … but New Labour keeps rolling along

AFTER two years of seeming to walk on electoral water, Tony Blair and his team are showing themselves to be fallible.

The European elections saw Labour voters stay home in droves, most conspicuously in areas with safe Labour seats. This has allowed a limited revival of the Tories, though they remain discredited on many key issues where Labour has not stolen their policies.

Blair will be pleased that the far left, with few exceptions, has failed to win over disillusioned Labour voters to its candidates, and will claim that in a general election they would have "nowhere else to go" but vote Labour.

But New Labour’s links with Murdoch and the press are under strain; there is no short-term chance of winning support for the EMU project; the Irish "peace" process is on the edge of crisis; John Prescott’s transport policies are a sick joke; scandals are still brewing over GM food; and the full cost of the bombing of Serbia is still to emerge.

So there is still scope for things to go horribly wrong for Blair.

His solution to the dip in the Party’s poll ratings has been to emphasise again his New Labour credentials, step up the offensive on welfare rights and asylum seekers, and focus his attention on winning well-heeled middle class support. It is not clear whether Blair even realises a wheel has come off his bandwagon. But New Labour has no way to repair the damage.