Historic third term for Labour

The reason was clear. The voters have delivered a sharp rebuke to the PM for his taking the country to war against Iraq in the teeth of popular opinion. Indeed, there can be little doubt that the election results translate into a severe personal reprimand of the Prime Minister, not only for his decision to take the country into an unpopular war, but also due to his lack of candour with the British public on the issue.

Nowhere was the antipathy to Mr. Blair's Iraq policy more apparent than in the London seat of Bethnal and Bow where renegade ex-Labour MP and staunch Iraq war critic George Galloway ran on an anti-war platform and unseated Oona King who had supported the war.

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The constituency is 40 percent Muslim (mostly Bangladeshi) and the result mirrored those in the other 40 major constituencies with significant Muslim populations, each of which showed a significant shift from Labour, typically to the anti-war Liberal Democrats.

The Conservatives did better than they did in the last two elections but still have fewer seats than Labour did at its post-war nadir in 1983, while the Liberal Democrats made significant gains, but remain firmly in third place. The Labour share of the electorate was the lowest in British history with them gaining slightly over 36 percent of the roughly 60 percent of the voters casting ballots.

Despite the Labour victory, there is no way to see this as other than a personal defeat for Tony Blair. Certainly the sheen has worn off this once highly popular leader, and even though he has delivered a third term for Labour, he has been tarnished by the result. The big winner is perhaps Chancellor Gordon Brown who is slated to succeed Blair as PM. With the voters sending such a strong anti-Blair message the party may decide to jettison the unpopular Prime Minister sooner rather than later.