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TINA Gets Tony a Third Stint
7 May, 2005
Labour’s historic third term with a vastly reduced majority is a rap in the knuckles of Tony Blair’s divisive Iraq campaign as well as the retrograde vision of the Tory plank.
BY JOMY VARGHESE
If Tony Blair got a historic third term, albeit with a reduced mandate, despite all the funny lies he sold to the British public to drag them to an unnecessary war in Iraq’s killing fields, it is due to what is called TINA.
Now TINA isn’t any Monica type-internee who rocked Bill Clinton’s Oval Office with a raunchy sex scam. TINA is simply lack of a credible opposition or
the There Is No Alternative factor.
For, despite all his fumbles with issues ranging from economy to Iraq, Blair still remained the best bet for Britons. That is why despite the general discontent with Blair’s rhetoric of lies the British voted for Labour for a historic third term, at the same time passing on the strong underlying message of discontent with a sharply reduced majority, unlike the two previous landslide mandates they gave him on a platter.
Blair projected a vision for future, which he said, would dawn only with another Labour stint in power. His detractors got too bogged down by the aimless monotony of the debate on the war in Iraq, to which Blair dragged Britain. Future won, past lost, despite skepticism about Blair.
Despite the win, Blair’s self-professed aim to integrate Britain wholly with the idea of a united Europe remained far cry. The Blair camp again came to the aid of their beleaguered leader saying Blair did much spadework and for all this to bear fruit, Labour under Blair needed a third term. It succeeded.
Blair’s triumph in bringing back Labour to power after long years of Thatcherism was that he could reform Labour into a votable party. He shed Labour’s opposition to the conservative economic line of thought propagated by Thatcherism and embraced the same, in the process taking Labour into the same Thatcherist camp. In fact, he undid the Tories by playing their own game.
He then put Britain on a track of economic reforms in the trajectory of the US, but hung on to the European social safety net policies. In Desi terminology, it is somewhat similar to the UPA government’s course of embracing market-driven policies and at the same time placating a large section of the voters through farmer-friendly policies and keeping the Employees Provident Fund rate to their liking. Remember, Blair doubled the spending on National Health Service in the eight years he had been at the helm of affairs. Blair also injected some sense of positive thinking in the Labour ranks about Europe.
Blair’s another achievement to boast off is devolution of powers to Scotland and Wales. The Good Friday accords he brokered in Ireland have not ended the bloodshed, but the spiral of violence has certainly dipped.
And a vote for Blair is also a vote cast for his projected successor, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown. In fact, a reduced mandate for Blair has already fuelled speculation that Blair may have to step down before this third term ends for Brown to run the country. Blair has vowed not to run for another term.
In contrast, his Tory counterpart Michael Howard tried to hardsell rightwing logic, whipping up the normal paranoia about a supposedly belligerent immigrant population. Though Howard was forced to do it after Blair successfully stole the Tory plank of sensible economics without taking away the focus from public reform, the Tory strategy backfired. The Liberal Democrats are slowly eating into the Tory as well as Labour votes, ending up with an impressive 60-plus lawmakers in the House of Commons.
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