Iraq takes centre stage - Howard's last strain of the tea leaves
Today the election battleground (no pun intended) shifted to Iraq for the first time during this campaign. As I said in an earlier post, I think Iraq will cost Labour a couple of percentage points of vote, but I don't think it is a strong enough effect to cost them the election on its own... and those who defect from Labour because of the war are far more likely to go to the Lib Dems, Greens or Respect than the Tories.
Michael Howard still looks relatively calm - perhaps too calm - on TV, but he must know that the attempt to seize the election by majoring (no pun intended) on Immigration has been, according to the polls at least, not nearly successful enough. That's the only reason why he would opt for trying to bash Blair on the war, lining up behind Charles Kennedy and the far left. Iraq is unlikely to be a strong vote-winner for Howard, as the Tories backed Labour's policy to the hilt and there is little doubt that they would have done exactly the same thing had they been in office - whether with Hague, Duncan Smith or Howard as leader.
Howard's strategy now is to join in the call for publication of the attorney general's legal advice over the war, in the hope this will show that the war was illegal. It seems most unlikely - to put it mildly - that Blair would allow the release of incriminating documentation this close to the election, or indeed after the election for that matter. It is more likely that if the attorney general had advised that the war was illegal, his advice will either never appear at all, or will appear only in a doctored form.
Howard's best bet is to hope that the backlash against the Government's refusal to disclose the advice will grow to gigantic proportions and trigger a massive crisis of public confidence in Blair, leading to a seismic shift in voting intentions. This is the political equivalent of the last few seconds in a basketball game where a team needing three points to win decides to shoot for the basket from its own backline... those long shots go in slightly more often than you think, but only slightly. Blair has survived the 'dodgy dossier', the Hutton report and the failure to find WMD so far, and it's unlikely this will sink him either. If this is the best shot the Tories have then unless the polls are catastrophically wrong, it's Game Over...
Michael Howard still looks relatively calm - perhaps too calm - on TV, but he must know that the attempt to seize the election by majoring (no pun intended) on Immigration has been, according to the polls at least, not nearly successful enough. That's the only reason why he would opt for trying to bash Blair on the war, lining up behind Charles Kennedy and the far left. Iraq is unlikely to be a strong vote-winner for Howard, as the Tories backed Labour's policy to the hilt and there is little doubt that they would have done exactly the same thing had they been in office - whether with Hague, Duncan Smith or Howard as leader.
Howard's strategy now is to join in the call for publication of the attorney general's legal advice over the war, in the hope this will show that the war was illegal. It seems most unlikely - to put it mildly - that Blair would allow the release of incriminating documentation this close to the election, or indeed after the election for that matter. It is more likely that if the attorney general had advised that the war was illegal, his advice will either never appear at all, or will appear only in a doctored form.
Howard's best bet is to hope that the backlash against the Government's refusal to disclose the advice will grow to gigantic proportions and trigger a massive crisis of public confidence in Blair, leading to a seismic shift in voting intentions. This is the political equivalent of the last few seconds in a basketball game where a team needing three points to win decides to shoot for the basket from its own backline... those long shots go in slightly more often than you think, but only slightly. Blair has survived the 'dodgy dossier', the Hutton report and the failure to find WMD so far, and it's unlikely this will sink him either. If this is the best shot the Tories have then unless the polls are catastrophically wrong, it's Game Over...
2 Comments:
I wouldn't totally rule out (as everyone else seems to) that there could yet be some swing back to Labour on Iraq.
Kennedy's campaign looks shoddy (Bush pictures everywhere), Blair is display some earnestness (in very stark contrast), and the idea that the Iraqi violence is being caused by terrorists rather than 'freedom fighters' seems to be spreading.
Couldn't say how much swing back this would equate to, but it's not to be sniffed at.
Agree that Kennedy's campaign is a bit shoddy, but then so is everybody else's by this stage. Blair is a man with an 'earnest' button just under his right armpit, which he switches on or off more or less at will. And I don't think anyone either pro or anti-war (apart from maybe George Galloway) is describing the insurgents as 'freedom fighters'?
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