Lyndsay Griffiths, Reuters  --  Arab News

LONDON, 27 February 2004 — No sooner has the British premier weathered one Iraq scandal than another emerges, but Tony Blair’s trust ratings are already so battered that talk of new dirty tricks should not cost him fresh votes, analysts believe.

“The people who are going to switch off from Blair already have,” said Bob Worcester, chairman of MORI pollsters. “All he has left are Labour loyalists — the don’t-knows, undecideds, don’t-cares and true-blues (Conservatives) have all gone,” he told Reuters.

On Thursday, a former Cabinet minister said Britain had bugged United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the run-up to the Iraq war as the United States and Britain struggled — and failed — to win UN backing for their invasion. Clare Short’s bombshell came a month after a top judge wrapped up an inquiry into the suicide of an Iraq weapons expert amid accusations the government had “sexed up” the case for a war most Britons opposed. Blair won a resounding all-clear from Judge Lord Hutton but the report did nothing to rebuild his standing among the public. His position was worsened by a stream of stories from anguished British soldiers who felt they were sent to war without adequate kit or care.

“What we are seeing is a series of allegations over Iraq. As soon as one goes away, another comes along,” said Wyn Grant, politics professor at Warwick University. “There is a cumulative, corrosive effect of all that. It’s reflected in the opinion polls and the levels of trust in Blair,” he told Reuters. Polls show only one in three now considers Blair trustworthy — a mighty fall from 1997 when the charismatic centrist was elected by a landslide.

The Iraq war has crushed his ratings and kept the focus on battlefield deaths and an unpopular alliance with President George W. Bush instead of the crucial home front. It also has a damaging crossover: if voters don’t trust Blair on war, why give him the benefit of the doubt on domestic issues?

Even the party faithful are no longer doing so, with restive members of Parliament rebelling in a key vote on education last month that saw Blair’s 161-seat majority reduced to just five.

Most analysts predict Blair will regain power with a reduced majority at the next election expected in 2005. Worcester sees Blair’s majority cut to 60-80. That would spell danger for Blair, with a hardcore of some 50 Labour MPs so opposed to the war they are ready to fight him on any number of issues. If his majority in Parliament fell below 100, the rebels could block many of his policies, leaving him hamstrung in a third term in power.

You lose trust precipitously and regain it glacially. Blair is now down to rock-bottom loyalists who trust him no matter what he says, and there is not enough time between now and the next election for him to regain much of it,” Worcester said. But while time is tight, analyst Michael Cox said it was long enough for voters to forget all about the bugging scandal. “It will have an impact in Westminster but not on voters. People have already got their positions worked out on war and Iraq and it won’t shift anyone’s perception,” he told Reuters.

Blair would not be drawn on the spying charge, clearly an embarrassment for a self-proclaimed internationalist who has heaped praise on Annan, the body he leads and the rule of law. But one more Iraq embarrassment does not spell electoral disaster, with pollsters saying public service reform and economic growth are the issues that will shape the next vote.

“This isn’t a mainstream issue,” the premier’s biographer, Anthony Seldon, told Reuters. “There is quite a Teflon factor still about Blair,” Seldon said. “He is able, clearly, to keep going through all this.”