“IT’S going to be fun,” said Prime Minister John Major at the start of Britain’s election campaign. Fun! Most people wanted to bury their heads under a blanket for six weeks, wishing vainly that all politicians would go away. What can any of them say that hasn’t already been said in a hundred cliché-ridden sound-bites? And how can Major regard as fun an election which he seems almost bound to lose, when losing means (he had told us so) great damage to his country and the erosion of all that he and his party have achieved?
The Labour Party-“New Labour,” as its leader, Tony Blair, likes to call it-is now so far ahead in the polls that you can’t get odds for a worthwhile bet. Why this should be so is a more interesting question. A reporter from the Financial Times, having just returned from six years in the United States, declared himself baffled. He found a country in excellent shape, its economy the healthiest in Europe, inflation low, unemployment falling, real incomes up, and yet its voters determined to eject ignominiously the government that has been in charge.
Comments