Quotes of the Day

A week before the british general election, the news inside Labour Party headquarters on Victoria Street in London was disturbing. A perfectly timed leak of the Attorney General's March 2003 legal advice to Tony Blair about the Iraq war was starting to hurt Blair in the polls. The memo proved he had not defied the legal advice or lied about it, but it did suggest he had not fully leveled with Parliament or the public about the perils of invading Iraq. Labour voters were suddenly draining away to the antiwar Liberal Democrats — twice as many as were switching the other way.

After a high-level meeting, the party's guns swiveled from the Conservatives to target the Lib Dems. Campaign workers were hustled into key marginal seats, and Blair gave a speech condemning the Lib Dems' policies on crime and drugs. Still the Lib Dems kept surging: by Sunday, the number crunchers at Victoria Street calculated their share of the vote could reach 25% by election day. Finally the Labour counterattack gained traction, and the tide subsided. The day before the election, Mark Penn, a U.S. pollster working for Labour, was able to write on a big whiteboard at headquarters "37 32 22" — his predicted share of Thursday's vote for Labour, Tories and Lib Dems. Close enough: the actual result was 35.2%, 32.3%, 22.0%.

Tony Blair was fair to call this result historic. It's the first time his Labour Party has won a third consecutive term in office. Yet his subdued recognition that he had "listened and learned" from voters acknowledged their tepid endorsement. Labour's share of the vote was the smallest of any government ever, and its new parliamentary majority of 66 M.P.s is a vertiginous plunge from the 167 majority it secured in 2001. Within hours of the polls closing, Britain's newspapers were discussing, in their usual feverish way, how long Blair would remain as Prime Minister.

In fact, the first person to announce his departure from politics after the election was Michael Howard, the Conservative leader. The Tories gained 33 seats, but are so far from their glory days under Margaret Thatcher that their share of the popular vote was no greater than in 2001. The Lib Dems had their best results since the 1920s, picking up 11 seats, mostly from Labour — but had hoped for more.

Still, Blair was the biggest loser. He has already announced this term will be his last. Wounded by the Iraq war and a campaign that culminated in bitter attacks on his character, he just limped across the finish line. Instead of bestowing a new mandate upon him, the election brought difficult questions: Can a man so furiously branded a liar resume normal political leadership? How much legislation can Blair pass, given that his parliamentary caucus is reduced and no longer views him as a vote-winning magician? Where, precisely, is the tipping point after which power will start cascading to Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer, who knows his popularity rescued Blair during the campaign and thirsts for the top job? Those close to Blair insist that point is a long way off — "three or four years," says one — though according to MORI, half the public would prefer Blair to leave this minute. Penn, who helped Bill Clinton come back from several major reversals, thinks Blair has plenty of juice left. "We successfully beat back the Tory appeal to their base, and we lost 2.5% on Iraq to the Lib Dems as a protest vote. This isn't Lyndon Johnson swept away by the Vietnam War. I think the protest is temporary. Blair has an opportunity to heal things and renew his leadership."

Possibly, that may turn out to be true. But Blair has surely learned that his leadership works best when Brown helps. After the Scot put his feud with Blair aside last month to plunge into a campaign that needed him badly, according to the polls, decisions were made smoothly. Blair and Brown themselves seemed to relish being good friends again. They were "laughing like they did 10 years ago" said one Labour veteran, as they barnstormed together around the country — and the bonhomie did not hurt with voters, either. The ministerial reshuffle Blair announced after the election promoted enough Brown acolytes to suggest that the era of good feelings isn't yet over.

The two men do have policy differences. Brown, though a supporter of business and leery of tax rates that might drive the wealthy out of Britain, is considered more left-wing, or "Old Labour." He has more passion for redistributing money to the poorest than Blair, and is concerned that injecting more choice into public services will lead to unacceptably different standards of quality. But these disputes have always been "pretty subtle — the sort of thing you have to be a senior civil servant or a think-tank person to put your finger on," says Sunder Katwala, general secretary of the Fabian Society, a Labour advocacy group. As the two men face tough choices this term on pensions, taxes, and benefits for the disabled, they can certainly bridge any gap between them — if they truly want to.

Blair is not yet done for. True, says one M.P., "the power of initiative is with Gordon." But, he continues: "The freedom is with Tony. Gordon has more to worry about." Brown has yet to win the hearts of middle England, without which Blair would not have won Labour's stunning victories in 1997 and 2001. Still, he's trying. At the final press conference before the election, almost jolly in his role as heir apparent, Brown deviated from his prepared text to soften rousing attacks on the privileged into gentler critiques of their privileges. Says a Blair ally: "If they can reach a grand modus vivendi, Tony will be delighted." That would be some relief, after an election in which the prime-ministerial nose was comprehensively bloodied.

• J.F.O. Mcallister | London
• Tony Blair won a third term and a bloody nose, but learned that he needs an old friend and rival if he is to get things done