Prime Minister Tony Blair suffered a fresh electoral setback yesterday, when his governing Labour Party lost one parliamentary seat to an anti-war party and narrowly avoided defeat in another constituency.
The Liberal Democrats, who strongly opposed the war in Iraq, came first with 10,274 votes in Leicester, a city in central England with a large Muslim population.
Labour came second with 8,620 votes and the Conservative Party was third with 5,796.
The result is a further blow for Blair, whose popularity has slumped since the Iraq war.
Labour fared terribly in local council and European Parliament elections last month, and some in the party question whether Blair, once their most prized electoral asset, has become a liability.
Labour narrowly held onto another parliamentary seat, in Birmingham, with 7,451 votes. The Liberal Democrats came second on 6,991 votes and the Conservatives came third with 3,543.
Government ministers tried to put a brave face on the result.
"What's astonishing is that seven years into a government, Labour has won one election and come a close second in another, " said Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt.
Hewitt insisted Blair's leadership "is absolutely secure.
"I am in no doubt that he will lead us into the election and will be winning an historic third term," she said.
The two by-elections, triggered by the death of one Labour lawmaker and the resignation of another, followed the publication on Wednesday of a report exposing widespread British intelligence failures on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
The inquiry, led by Lord Butler, concluded that British intelligence was flawed, but said the government had not deliberately deceived anyone as it built a case for toppling former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
It was the fourth such inquiry to clear the government of hyping the Iraqi threat. Blair claimed vindication, insisting he acted in good faith.
Political opponents, however, say Blair's confident assertions before the war that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were misleading, when intelligence was patchy at best.
The new Liberal Democrat lawmaker for the Leicester South constituency, Parmjit Singh Gill, who overturned a large Labour majority of 13,243 votes, said the electorate had given their verdict on the war.
"The claims about weapons of mass destruction were exaggerated," he said, in his victory speech.
"The justification which Tony Blair gave for backing [US President] George W. Bush was wrong. Their message is that the prime minister has abused and lost their trust," Gill said.
Blair's Health Minister, John Reid, conceded that some voters were unhappy about the war.
"I have not denied there is an element of protest in the results, nor have I denied that we have got to listen to what has been said. All I have said is that it is not entirely about Iraq," he told the British Broadcasting Corp.
The Liberal Democrats fought both seats on a strong anti-war ticket, reaching out to large Muslim populations. Leicester South has 20,000 Muslims, representing 18 percent of the population. The city is expected within a decade to be the first British city with a nonwhite majority. Birmingham's Hodge Hill constituency has some 8,500 Muslims, or 14 percent of the population.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS