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Blair to announce delay of British elections
Compiled from Times wires © St. Petersburg Times, published April 2, 2001 LONDON -- Prime Minister Tony Blair has decided to delay the national election that had been expected next month, politicians and media reports said, so he can focus his energy on the battle against the foot-and-mouth epidemic afflicting British livestock. Blair had been planning to go to the voters May 3 to seek a new term. But in the past two weeks, the prime minister has come under intense pressure -- from farmers, from the media, and even from the Archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual head of the Anglican church -- to put off a vote until the blight is under control. Most of Britain's Sunday newspapers praised the decision. "He is to be congratulated," said the News of the World, the nation's largest-circulation paper. Delaying the election demonstrates "true leadership," its editorial argued. Blair is expected to announce his new plans today. Some reports said he will delay the voting barely a month, setting a new election for national and local offices on June 7. Others predicted he would leave the date open pending further progress in the war on foot-and-mouth. In Britain's parliamentary system, the prime minister has the power to dissolve Parliament whenever he wants and call a new election. With a wide lead in every opinion survey and a strong economy that might just be starting to soften, Blair and his governing Labor Party had decided on May 3. But five weeks ago foot-and-mouth started spreading, prompting the pressure to change. The Ministry of Agriculture on Sunday put the number of confirmed cases in the six-week epidemic at 875, and that of livestock marked for slaughter in the preventive cull at 940,000. A poll by MORI, published in the Sunday Telegraph, suggested the perils that Blair might have encountered if he had persisted with a vote on May 3: It showed his Labor Party losing 3 points from its 19-point lead in the past three days, all because of unease in rural areas. Alastair Campbell, the prime minister's spokesman, said Blair's announcement today "will do what is right for the country as a whole." While putting off any official word until then, 10 Downing St. alerted the BBC and selected newspapers on Saturday night of the outcome of the week of fevered political consultations. It would be the first suspension of local elections -- which, unlike the national vote, are on a regular schedule -- since World War II. In making his decision, Blair rejected the advice of many members of his Cabinet and a majority of Labor members of Parliament, who were eager to capitalize on the party's favorable showing in opinion surveys. They are also worried that delay could expose the party to the dangers of suddenly declining economic fortunes or some other event in what has been a star-crossed period of natural calamities and public-service collapses in Britain. In addition to the foot-and-mouth epidemic, which broke out in February and has led to restrictions on movement in the countryside, the past year has produced other blows to the sense of national well-being. Britain has had the greatest yearly rainfall since computation began in 1765, the worst floods in 400 years, fatal train crashes and speed restrictions on the rails that have caused havoc, and a wildcat protest of gasoline taxes that managed to close down 90 percent of British supplies to motorists almost overnight. Blair and the Labor Party have maintained their polling lead over the opposition Conservatives throughout, except with the gasoline taxes, when the public rallied to farmers and truckers and gave the Tories the only lead in the polls that they have enjoyed since Blair came to power with a 179-seat majority in the election of May 1997. The gasoline protest last fall caught 10 Downing St. by surprise, and Blair's own pollsters have been warning him in recent days that the current crisis could produce a similarly combustible anti-government mood if he is perceived as being arrogant and distant, as he was then. - Information from the Washington Post and New York Times was used in this report.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
