Quotes of the Day

We had excellent results," British Conservative leader Michael Howard said at a postelection rally last week, and he had reason to declare victory: his Tories picked up 38% of the total vote in last week's local elections across England and Wales, according to BBC post-election projections. With the perennial also-ran Liberal Democrats grabbing 29% of the vote, it was Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party that came in third, with just 26% — the first time a British ruling party had fared so poorly. Blair's support for the Iraq war made him so radioactive that he barely campaigned, and Home Secretary David Blunkett declared himself "mortified" by the battering Labour took. But the Tories' happy days looked likely to be here and gone by Sunday, when the European Parliament results were due. British voters remain so deeply divided about what place they want for their country within the European Union that they were expected to hand more than 10% of the parliamentary vote to an anti-E.U. splinter group called the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP). And the UKIP was likely to pull votes from the famously (but more moderately) Euro-skeptical Tories — who stood to lose as many as a third of their M.E.P. seats, bringing Howard's celebration to a quick end.

UKIP's brand of fire-breathing Euro- hatred — they want Britain out of the E.U., period — was projected to show up in results from other countries too, including Belgium, Sweden and Poland, where the Samoobrona Party, which wants to renegotiate Poland's terms of entry into the E.U., was expected to take as many as 13 seats. According to one poll conducted for the European Parliament, Euro-skeptic M.E.P.s will constitute about a tenth of its membership, and possibly hold the balance of power on some issues. As E.U. leaders assemble in Brussels this week in hopes of finally agreeing on a long-delayed constitution that is anathema to these newly invigorated skeptics, this election was one more crack in the plaster of the European project.

Despite its poor showing, Labour avoided a total meltdown, allowing Blair to once again scrape through with his political skin more or less intact. The newspapers have left him for dead countless times, and last week was no different. His political capital is running very low, and backbenchers made the usual calls for him to go, but Blair — fresh from playing statesman at the G-8 meeting in Georgia — was having none of it. "It's a question of holding our nerve and seeing it through," he said. Which may have been one way of asking: Who's going to make me go?

Michael Howard is trying. The immediate question for him is how to use these elections as a launchpad for returning the once-mighty Tories to government. There's no doubt that the party's good local election results owe much to his efforts. After winning the leadership last November, he re-energized party workers, quelled squabbling in the shadow cabinet, and established a reputation for brisk competence that has made him a credible contender for Prime Minister — especially since 61% of voters in a recent MORI survey disapproved of Blair's job performance.

Howard's appeal was evident early this month on a campaign stop in Eastbourne, on England's south coast, when he propelled himself out of a minivan to press the flesh. Though once famously skewered by another Tory minister for having "something of the night" about him — an allegedly dark and devious side — Howard, 62, appeared invigorated by sunny retail politics, chatting with local councillors and police, and grabbing passersby to ask, "Are you going to vote Conservative?" In this crowd, mostly elderly and white, the answer was usually yes.

But that demographic may not be enough to get the Tories back to Downing Street. A distinguished lawyer with a precise manner and a long public career, including four years as John Major's hard-line Home Secretary, Howard is not a natural pick for young, multicultural Britons or those who want sweeping change. Frustration with politics as usual was a big factor in the protest vote that flowed to UKIP, which ran a brilliant insurgent campaign centered on the charismatic, perma-tanned Robert Kilroy-Silk, a former Labour M.P. who hosted a TV talk show for 17 years until he had to give it up in January after calling Islam a religion of "limb amputators." No one expects UKIP to make much of a dent in the general election, expected next spring, but the problem for Tories is UKIP's hypnotic effect on much of its own right wing. Howard is trying to position his party as responsibly Euro-skeptic, saying Britain should stay inside the E.U. but work to reform it. This is smart territory to inhabit. A majority of British voters oppose joining the euro and the European constitution — but they still want to stay in the E.U.

The problem is that 57% of Tories don't, and for many it's a crucial issue, so that a more moderate stance threatens internal schisms. During the campaign, Howard appeared rattled by the UKIP threat. He repeatedly inched toward them, saying he wanted Britain to regain control over social policy now given to Brussels, and finally stating he would unilaterally pull Britain out of the common fisheries policy if he couldn't negotiate changes — which could imply a messy breach with the E.U., since treaty revisions would require almost inconceivable unanimous consent from 25 member states. His best hope for not getting drawn deeper into the Euro-wrangling is the constitution: though it confers more power on Brussels, Blair will give it provisional consent this week, thus providing a handy enemy around which Howard's whole party can unite.

Howard has other problems. He says he wants to reach out to minorities who have long distrusted Conservatives, but his own right-wing record makes that harder. He can't capitalize on the disillusion caused by Iraq because his party strongly backed the war. And when Tories do manage to advance policies that gain popularity, Labour simply adopts them. Blair neutralized the Tories' main issue for last week's election by agreeing in April to hold a referendum on the constitution. Since then he has snatched Tory positions on compensating people whose pensions collapsed along with their companies and reconsidering fuel tax hikes scheduled for September. While Britain's economy remains strong — a growth rate last year of 2.3% — "disillusionment with Labour is a necessary but not sufficient condition for returning the Tories to power," says Nick Sparrow, managing director of the ICM polling firm. A recent ICM survey shows that voters still see Blair as more competent, trustworthy and in touch with ordinary people than Howard.

Howard plans to launch a raft of kinder, gentler new policies in the next few months. "We have to convince people we can make things better," he says simply. But there's no sign yet of any Big Idea emerging to engage voters. Patrick Seyd, co-author of a book on the Tory party, says it still hasn't recovered from Thatcherism, when it became more starkly ideological. The great issues that animated Conservatives then — excess union power and communism — have disappeared, with nothing much to replace them. "The conservatives' lust for power is beginning to re-emerge, which is crucial to internal discipline," he says. "But Thatcherism doesn't provide a guide to the 21st century. And they haven't managed to find the answer on Europe or on the role of the state."

At another campaign stop, Howard stepped off the helicopter and made animated conversation at a sailing school with Julie Cornish, a retired policewoman. Afterward, as she tidied up a small boat, her verdict was positive but tepid. "He can communicate, he's approachable, but all of them, once they get in, you don't know what's really going to happen," she says — and doubts she'll vote Tory next spring. If Howard is to return his party to power, he'll need much fairer winds than that.

• J.F.O. MCALLISTER | London
• Have the elections helped Michael Howard in his quest to unseat Tony Blair?