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What a difference a good night’s sleep and a little popular mandate
will do for you. This is about
Tony but could be said for George, too.
Reversal of Fortune
British public opinion has shifted toward Tony Blair since
the war in Iraq began. But will it last?
The swing looks like a powerful vindication of the
Downing Street strategists who had always argued that opposition would start to
ebb as soon as the first salvoes of the war were fired. It also knocks away one
of his critics’ principal arguments: that the prime minister was leading his
country to war without the support of the international community or his own
electorate. Some of the plaudits belong to Blair himself. His oratory is
credited in reducing the possible scale of the rebellion among his own
party members in last week’s debate that won him a mandate for war. Sure, a
record 139 Labour members of Parliament were ready to vote against their
leader—but that was before the prime minister had wowed the House of Commons
with a stirring speech about why the war was necessary. If Parliament was
roused, so too were members of the public. Furthermore, Blair somehow persuaded the formidable International
Development Secretary Clare Short to stay in office despite her
public threat to resign if he failed to gain a second resolution from the
United Nations authorizing war. That was one more demonstration of his
political skills to impress the voters. Blair can also thank his old enemies in the
Conservative-owned press. When war first threatened, some of the Fleet Street media
heavyweights were hesitant to give the prime minister their full-throated
support. Attitudes only crystallized in the final weeks. “Once the papers
decided this was really an important matter they were ready to put aside their
loathing for Blair,” says Roy Greenslade, a media pundit and former editor of
the tabloid Mirror. Result: the kind of headlines and comment columns that will
have helped to push the don’t-knows into the supporters’ camp. Still, there’s little cause for complacency in Downing Street. Those
surging poll figures still trail some 20 points behind the number of Americans
who expressed support for the war immediately after it began, and rank far
below levels reached in previous conflicts. In the 1991 gulf war, support for
the government reached 70 per cent; for the Kosovo campaign of 1999 it climbed
to the mid-60s. Says Philip Taylor, a media expert at Leeds University: “Most newspapers
usually go on message when the boys go to war, but at 54 per
cent it is still well below what we are used to.” Perhaps more significantly, the polls say more about patriotism than
conversion to the war cause. “Opinion has
swung round behind the people facing the bullets,” says Graham Allen, a Labour
M.P. who helped to coordinate last week’s rebellion in the House of Commons,
the lower house of Parliament. “The public feels it would be treacherous not to
give their support: they don’t make the distinction between supporting the war
and supporting the troops.” The pattern is familiar. In times of crisis, nervous voters rally round
the armed forces, their leaders and their institutions “I have always said that
when Tommy goes to war the public will follow,” says veteran opinion-watcher
Bob Worcester of the polling and research group MORI. “This is a democratic
society. The prime minister has made a decision and has the support of
Parliament.” Can such support continue? For a short time certainly, says Worcester,
though he’s reluctant to speculate on just long the public could tolerate a war
of setbacks or stalemate. For a historical precedent, he looks to the United
States, where it took several years of conflict and thousands of casualties for
the American public to turn against the war in Vietnam. Much may depend on the
Iraqis and their apparent readiness to ignore the established codes of war.
“The longer that Saddam Hussein doesn’t play by the rules, the more resolved
the British public will be,” says Worcester. But this conflict may defy such precedents. Because CNN was largely
unknown to British audiences 12 years ago, this is the first war that British
viewers can watch round the clock in their living rooms—mostly on home-grown
24-hour news channels. In time, relentless exposure to shots of bloodied
casualties and dead civilians is sure to sap the fighting spirit. Besides, whatever Blair
may argue, neither the public nor many experts are ready to accept that
Britain’s national interests are at stake. “Unlike the Second World War or the
cold war, this is not a war of necessity—it is a war of choice,” says Sir Michael Clarke
of the Centre for Defence Studies in London. Without the bolstering of necessity, the public’s long-term commitment
to war will always be open to question. A few more disturbing pictures
from the battlefront or Baghdad and the numbers could turn against Blair again.
Says Clarke: “When the images are persistently bad it raises doubts about what
you are doing in the first place.” Next time Blair meets Bush, the wrinkles
could be back on the prime minister’s forehead. http://www.msnbc.com/news/891337.asp?0cv=CB10 Outgoing mail scanned by
NAV 2002 |
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