Betting on Blair.(Brief Article)

Ladbrokes, the grand British bookie, took the unprecedented step of paying out winnings before a race was even over. The race in question was the British general election, in which a landslide for Tony Blair's "New Labour" government was so taken for granted that betting on it counted as a sure thing. Still more remarkably, the focus of interest for public and pundits was not the New Labour thoroughbred cantering toward a comfortable triumph but the battered old Tory nag struggling to stay in second place with about 30 percent of the popular vote in the final pre-election polls. As Matthew Parris of the London Times pointed out, people were voting for a government they do not love in part because they want to inflict a second catastrophic defeat on a Tory opposition they seemingly despise.

The main result of this is likely to be a very short honeymoon for Blair, as the electorate, having indulged its anti-Tory spleen, wakes up to realize that it still has long waiting lines for surgery, declining educational services, the prospect of absorption into a European federal state, and a government that prefers public-relations "spin" to public debate over its policies.

For the moment, however, it is the Tories' plight that invites analysis. "They're out of the mainstream on the euro," claim the government, the Brussels bureaucrats, and the dwindling band of left- wing Europhiliac Tories. Unfortunately for this argument, both the opinion polls and the experience of doorstep canvassers make plain that keeping the pound is almost the only popular policy the Tories have. ...