…on Blair and his lies. He faults the Tories for attacking Blair as a liar:

It especially doesn’t work for the Tories because they’re accusing Prime Minister Blair of duplicity on an issue about which they actually agree with him. Conservative leader Michael Howard says he would have supported the invasion of Iraq even without weapons of mass destruction — the subject of Blair’s supposed dissembling. By nevertheless making the L-word the centerpiece of today’s election, Howard comes off as opportunistic and unprincipled.

This, I am afraid, is nonsense. The accusation, entirely deserved by the way, that Blair is a liar did not revolve around the war; the point that the Conservatives were making (not that effectively, admittedly) was that Blair’s lies over the war were just one example among many. Blair simply cannot be trusted, really, on anything.

As Blair’s own finance minister, loopy Gordon Brown, told the PM last year, “there’s nothing that you could ever say to me now that I could ever believe.”

What a pity that a trusting 37 percent of British voters (Blair’s share of the poll) disagreed.

Monday-morning quarterbacking someone’s predictions is all too easy, and all too unfair, but this comment from Boot also made me laugh:

The biggest change Howard has promised is a reduction in immigration. This may snare some votes among xenophobic yobs, but it has also led (Arnold Schwarzenegger, pay attention) to a backlash against “mean-spirited” right-wingers.

Some backlash, Max.

Incidentally, in a recent interview on the BBC, Blair was asked eighteen times for an estimate as to how many illegal immigrants there were in England. He refused to answer. I guess he thought the plebs (sorry, Max, ‘yobs’) didn’t deserve to be told. Charming.

UPDATE

From the Guardian:

Labour feared last night that a pincer movement of working-class antipathy to immigration and middle-class opposition to the Iraq war had cut Tony Blair’s majority by much more than he had hoped.

Some backlash, Max.