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Blair's popularity takes a dive
19/03/2006 08:25 - (SA)
Robert MacPherson
London British Prime Minister Tony Blair's credibility is at stake after public opinion polls on Sunday exposed a sharp degree of skepticism amongst voters over a political financing scandal.
Fifty-six percent of voters polled by the YouGov organisation for the Sunday Times newspaper said they thought that Blair had given peerages in return for donations and loans to his Labour Party.
Only 14% believed he had not, according to the poll, published after a stormy week for Blair in which the financing flap dominated the political headlines amid insinuations of sleeze.
The same poll also put Blair's personal approval rating at 36% - its lowest point ever, according to the pollsters.
Peers are members of the House of Lords, the all-appointed upper chamber of the British parliament that plays an influentual role in vetting legislation put forward by the government in the elected House of Commons.
In another poll, by ICM for the Sunday Telegraph newspaper, seven out of 10 poll respondents said they felt Labour was at least as sleazy as the Conservatives had been when they were trounced by Labour in the 1997 elections.
It remains to be seen how the furore might overshadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown's annual budget address on Wednesday, before Blair attends a two-day EU summit in Brussels.
But it has been enough to rattle grassroots Labour activists who fear it will cost the party votes in local council elections on May 4.
The Labour Party conceded Friday that it had received £13.95m in loans from wealthy supporters last year, when Blair steered Labour to a third straight election win.
The loans were made "in full compliance" with political financing rules, which in Britain require donations - but not loans - to be publicly disclosed, a Labour Party spokesperson said.
In his monthly press conference at his Downing Street residence on Thursday, a clearly embattled Blair strongly denied that any loans to the Labour Party had been improper.
But he revealed that he was considering changes to how nominations to the Lords are conducted - including a proposal to limit the role of the prime minister in the process.
As part of the shake-up, Blair's spokesperson announced on Friday that a former senior civil servant, Sir Hayden Phillips, had been appointed to look at the future of party funding, in liaison with political parties.
Blair has declared that he will resign as prime minister sometime during this term in office, which expires in 2010, making way for Brown - long regarded as his uncontested heir apparent - to succeed him.
The notion of Blair standing down sooner rather than later was mooted on Friday by the influential Economist newsmagazine, which had endorsed Labour's re-election last May.
"Only if he feels absolutely sure that he is capable of driving his health and other reforms through during the next two years should he stay longer," it said in an editorial.
"To do that, after nine wearying years in office, would be quite a task. Better, surely, for him to quit while he is still ahead."
Judging from Sunday's poll results, many Brits seem to feel likewise.
Forty-nine percent of those polled for the Sunday Times said Blair should step down this year, while 46% of respondents to the Sunday Telegraph poll thought that he should "step down now".
YouGov quizzed 1 811 voters via the Internet on Thursday and Friday, while the ICM poll for the Sunday Telegraph was based on phone calls to 1 003 adults on Friday and Saturday.
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