Blair's third term: What is it due to?

Blair is amazingly eloquent, always on the top of his stuff and at his compassionate best. He has the knack of always sounding and looking like he really believes in what he is saying. That makes him astonishingly convincing. But this time around, Blair's once overwhelmingly popularity has taken an apparent beating. Blair's special magic, with its particular appeal to female voters, is no longer working. As Blair's popularity has crashed, so have the fortunes of his own dispirited Labour Party. Now, for the first time in recent memory, Britain's politicians and voters are pondering life after Blair.

Obviously Iraq is the principal cause of Blair's fall from the grace he once enjoyed, his infamous justifications for invading Iraq being exposed as a pack of white lies. His indecorous claim that Iraq could attack Britain within 45 minutes with weapon of mass destruction made Blair appear either a fool or an arch schemer in an aggressive war to grab oil and boost the fortune of Israel. Americans are always more charitable in attitude and more forgiving of their government's lies and distortions than Britons. Most American apparently couldn't care less that they were deceived into a war by their president, who actually suggested that Iraqi drones of death massed on lurking steamers in the North Atlantic might be able to spray germs across the sleeping United States.

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Americans just wanted revenge for the emasculating and humiliating 9/11 attacks. Nothing more, nothing less. They were not particular about whom they attacked or why. But two years after the invasion of Iraq, Britons -- better educated and more conscientious than their US cousins -- remain disgusted by Blair's untruths. His sanctimonious piety has come back to haunt him.

Perhaps, being a country of higher moral standards, Britain's political turf is somewhat different, and its politicians are more vulnerable to being called to account for their moral failings. Therefore, unlike George Bush, Blair's reputation has been more seriously damaged among his countrymen and women.

In the end, good sense seems to have dawned on Blair and he was able to more or less wriggle out of the situation, even though there was, of course, much residual damage. But what really came to Blair's rescue was the notoriously squabbling Michael Howard who put on a pitifully inept performance as leader of the opposition Tories. Howard continued the tradition of weak, stunted leadership that appears to be Mrs. Thatcher's legacy to her party which dissipates much of its energies on internal civil war over whether or not to truly join the European Union.

Howard failed miserably to capitalise on Blair's rush to war and failed to capture the outrage of the some 65 percent of Britons strongly opposed to the conflict. Instead, like John Kerry in the US, Howard jumped on the pro-war bandwagon. The fact that Howard is an ardent supporter of Israel's expansionist right perhaps played a key role in his decision to support Blair in the war. But by doing good for Israel, he did bad for his own Conservative Party and paved the way for a Labour victory.

Nevertheless, Blair's victory is not without its losses. This time, the Labour Party's majority of one hundred plus was cut in half and it is this that Balir will likely be remembered for more than his legacy of three election wins.

Some of the losses are unpardonable and can be laid squarely at Balir's feet. For example, Ms. Oona King, MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, which includes Tower Hamlets, who has long championed Bengali causes in this Bengali populated constituency that has been a Labour borough for the last several decades, was defeated by rebel ex-Labour MP George Galloway due solely to her support for Blair's Iraq war.

The final numbers showed less than a three point gap between the two parties. Had the Tories a stronger leader, Blair would surely be out of his job. Moreover, his Labour Party rival Chancellor Gordon Brown is waiting in the wings, looking over Blair's shoulder and waiting for the chance to stab him in the back at the first opportunity.

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.