From almost any conservative angle, Britain’s election result is disappointing.
From the standpoint of a British conservative, the Tory party lost a third election and gained very little ground — less than 1 percent of the popular vote.
No.
As I said yesterday… the Tories have tilted so far left you can’t fit water between they and the Liberals on domestic issues. They didn’t lose because they were conservatives, but rather because they are not.
From an American conservative standpoint, Tony Blair, who is a loyal friend of the United States, is today in a noticeably weakened political state. Though he won a third term — the first Labour prime minister to do so — he saw his majority substantially reduced and his share of the popular vote fall to a derisory 36 percent. If the British electoral system had not become so lopsidedly biased, he would have almost no majority at all.
And to the same point;
From the standpoint of a foreign-policy conservative, Blair’s loss is a sign of weakening support for the U.S. across Europe, even in America’s most reliable ally. Blair is generally reckoned to have lost a large number of “middle-class progressive” votes (i.e., Guardian-reading, muesli-eating, electric-car-driving voters) to the Liberal Democrats because of their hostility to the Iraq war.
Again, no, on both of these points.
Look at the amount of vitriol that the Tories the Lib Demos and the press have been aiming at Mr. Blair. That they put such a full-court press on, and this is the best they could do, I take as indicative that what anger there is out there against Blair is at worst soft, and largely manufactured.