Why Was Labour Returned to Power?

As I begin to write this, it's about eight o'clock in the morning in Great Britain, the day after British elections. Tony Blair and his Labour Party have been returned to power in the House of Commons.

As the commentators have been saying, this is unprecedented; it's the first time Labour has received a third term ever.

Most seem to feel that Labour's victory has been given begrudgingly by the British electorate. Britons hate the war in Iraq and seem to feel that Blair lied to them about the intelligence surrounding weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in the run-up to the war. But, it's thought, Britons like the relatively strong economy that Labour and particularly, it's said, that chancellor of the exchequer Gordon Brown, have given them.

I heard CNN political analyst Bill Schneider, reporting from London yesterday, say that Britons were probably going to return Labour to power, but had decided that Labour should have a dramatically reduced majority in Commons. Now that this has happened, Schneider and others will seem prescient.

Frankly, I question some of the wisdom in this pool of commonly accepted ideas.

(1) First of all, who orchestrated this elaborate conspiracy hinted at in Schneider's (and others') analysis? In which constituencies were voters who were unhappy with Blair told, "Okay, throw your votes elsewhere" and in what others were those going to the polls given the message, "In spite of your misgivings, vote for Labour. We don't want to turn them out of power, just give them a message"?

People vote for a variety of reasons and their votes usually send messages. But their mode of operation is rarely as sophisticated as Schneider's theories would indicate. It's doubtful that most British voters were thinking, "I want Labour back in, but with a reduced majority." No, unlike what's being proposed by the US Senate's Dems for votes on the confirmation of judges, voters give political candidates simple up or down votes. In British elections, you don't vote directly for the prime minister. You vote for the party's candidate for the House of Commons with the understanding that if your MP candidate wins, he or she will vote for their party chief to become prime minister. People who elected Labor MPs voted for Blair, whatever their misgivings. People who voted for Conservative or Liberal Democratic candidates were voting against Blair. Those straightforward votes were the messages of individual voters. Period.


(2) If Britons as a collective electorate hate the war as much as it's said that they do, they would have turned Labour out. In saying this, I'm not suggesting the existence of a "silent majority" who support the war. I really believe that a huge majority in that country hates the war in Iraq. But they hate other things more: unemployment, high interest rates, inflation.

For all their misgivings about the war, Britons voted more from their pocketbooks than anything else. That may or may not say horrible things about them. But it's the truth.

(3) Undergirding just how relatively insignificant the war was in this election are the tallies of Labour's two major opposition parties. The Conservatives, who supported British entry into the war in spite of misgivings about the government's decision-making process--echoes of John Kerry--has thus far padded its contingent in the House of Commons by 33 seats. The Liberal Democrats, the party adamant in opposing the war, has only gained 11 seats.

The election turned on the economy and also, it seems, immigration issues. But not the war.

One wonders, Is this what democracy has become, an ongoing referenda in which the lab rats who are sated give the power of the purse to those who feed us most?

After all, if the British are as convinced of the reprehensibility and murderous futility of the war as they say they are in all the polling, how could they in good conscience return Blair and Labour? Did fat wallets trump body bags as a symbol for this election? If so, it's not a pretty picture.

Please understand, I am not making an argument for or against the war here. I'm only suggesting a massive disconnect between what the British are saying about the war and how they voted in yesterday's election. By their votes, for good or ill, they endorsed the war in Iraq. It's no longer just Blair's war, or Bush's war, or that of the United States. It's their war too and it doesn't matter if the average Labour voter would argue that they were voting for their own prosperity, not for Britain's participation in the war. It was a twofer and in returning Blair, they said that the economy was more important to them than what happened to the British soldiers, the fate of whom they may claim to be at the root of their opposition to the war. Sanctimony is no longer an option for British "opponents" to the war in Iraq who voted for Tony Blair's party.

Whether Blair was right or wrong on the war, when the bottom line is the bottom line, people are saying that they put a higher value on money than human life. All in the western democracies have traveled a long way down this road of hedonism. And clearly, we in the United States have led the way.

But the British elections yesterday demonstrate that we're not alone.