Blair vs. The Press.(Tony Blair)

Last week Tony Blair seemed to be sitting about as pretty as a prime minister can sit going into a re-election campaign. The opposition Conservative Party was in disarray, barely able to crack a 30 percent ceiling in the polls. In one survey, Blair's Labour Party was 24 points ahead--as commanding a lead as any party has ever held going into a British re-election campaign. Labour is virtually assured of a second term, but that doesn't mean Blair won't be battered on the way to victory. The Tories may be a feeble opponent, but the British press is more than ready to stand in for them.

Blair got a taste of what's to come last week when he launched his party's campaign among hymn-signing schoolgirls in south London. In The Times of London, columnist Matthew Parris's usual elegant wit gave way to a diatribe on the stage-managed, Blair-in-shirtsleeves performance: "It was breathtakingly, hog-whimperingly tasteless. If the P.M. sanctioned the arrangements for this dire event, and if there is a Hell, he will go there." And that's from a paper expected to back Blair in the election. In the always problematic Daily Mail, a not-so- cherubic-looking Blair was pictured beneath the smirking headline here BEGINNETH BLAIR'S CRUSADE.

Britain's historically feisty national press has become even feistier. The United Kingdom has the most competitive major-newspaper market in the world: sensationalism, killer headlines, rapier writing, crusades to save the pound or send asylum seekers home. Journalistic aggression has become institutionalized amid weakening circulation and the struggle for market pre-eminence. As ideology wanes and political differences blur among the mainstream parties, newspapers on the left and the right carry the torch of strong opinion. They hammer Blair mercilessly--on everything from Britain's ailing health service to schools, Europe and mad-cow disease. None of which is likely to keep him from winning, but all of which have made for rousing entertainment.

The right-wing press, says a source close to Blair, has come to believe it has a "divine right to rule" after nearly two decades of unbroken Tory governments. The power monopoly only ended when Blair rose up to smite the Conservatives in 1997. Brits were tired of Tory rule and Blair, a new face, co-opted many of their positions, including pro- business policies. Post-defeat, the Tories lacked a strong personality to pull them out of their funk. And William Hague, their dogged but ineffectual leader, failed to capture the public imagination, or seal a deep internal rift over Britain's place in Europe.

The press has happily rushed into the vacuum left by the Tories. "The press is the only opposition Blair's got," says Robert Worcester, chairman of the MORI opinion-research firm. The newspapers have "supplanted Parliament," says Roy Greenslade, media commentator and ex- editor of the Daily Mirror. "Parliament has become a waste of time." The press is unapologetic. Says Charles Moore, editor of The Daily Telegraph, a million-circulation paper and an influential Conservative voice, "It's easier for us to be full-blooded in our opposition than it is for the Tory Party. The Tory Party is afflicted by self-doubt."

Like his fellow editors on the right or left, Moore is not, especially when it comes to his take on the Blair government. "It's unpatriotic, anti-British, overly metropolitan and obsessively politically correct," he says. The Telegraph's news columns faithfully reflect Moore's views. Witness the headline on a long March 29 article dissecting the government's handling of Britain's recent foot-and-mouth crisis, which prompted Blair to ditch his preferred May 3 election date: how it took 37 days to ruin the country.

Blair and his powerful press spokesman Alastair Campbell have to contend with 20 national papers. The only dependably progovernment, pro-Labour paper of the lot is the Daily Mirror (2.2 million circulation); The Guardian (400,000) used to be considered Labour's house journal, but is now a frequent attacker, especially on matters of social policy. In full oppo mode, the papers can feel like a "flail of scorpions," as Andrew Marr, former editor of The Independent, once put it.