Blair may bow out sooner rather than later after 'bloody nose' from voters

by Deborah Haynes - AFP, Despite his third straight mandate, Prime Minister Tony Blair could be leaving the political stage sooner rather than later after voters dealt him a "bloody nose" over the Iraq war, experts said.

"It is a bit of a bloody nose for Tony Blair," said Rosie Campbell, from the politics department of Birkbeck College, part of the University of London, as the Labour Party returned to power but with a significantly reduced majority in the House of Commons.

"It is a message that the country has reacted in a hostile way to his handling of Iraq," she told AFP as the results started to pour in from Thursday's general election.

Campbell noted, however, that the results could have been much worse. "It definitely sets a third term for the Labour Party, which is unprecedented, and I think it means Tony Blair can hang on for a bit longer but not indefinitely," she said.

She gave the prime minister two more years in Downing Street, despite his announcement last year that, if re-elected, he would serve a full term and then step aside.

Blair, who turned 52 on Friday, has swung from an electoral asset in his first two elections as Labour leader to being a seeming liability, largely due to his decision to back the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Conservative leader Michael Howard branded Blair a liar during a bruising month-long campaign for allegedly misleading the public over the conflict. The the Liberal Democrats meanwhile sought to capitalised on its anti-war stance.

Opinion polls repeatedly showed many Labour backers saying they supported the party in spite of Blair, rather than because of him, and that they wanted him to step down in favour of his popular finance minister, Gordon Brown.

"I do not think the Labour Party truly understood how deeply the war eroded its support among middle class people in this country," said Richard Sennett of the London School of Economics (LSE). "One clear message about this... is that as in Spain and as in Poland and perhaps as in Italy, Blair's alliance with (US President) George W. Bush has cost him dear," said Sennett. Like Campbell, Sennett predicted that Blair will retire as prime minister in two years, rather than serve a full term that could run to a maximum five years.

Blair tried to limit the fallout from Iraq by campaigning frequently alongside Brown, who opinion polls showed would be a more popular choice for prime minister. "Tony Blair has lost the trust of the population. Gordon Brown has come to the rescue and can succeed his way to Downing Street rather faster than he might otherwise have done," said Iain Begg of the LSE's European Institute.