Blair will likely call an election in early May. British campaigns are mercifully short. By contrast, every four years, American voters suffer six to seven excruciating months of hypocrisy, mudslinging and windbaggery.

Blair is amazingly eloquent, silky smooth, always on top of his material, oozing compassion and missionary zeal from every pore. He has the knack of always sounding and looking like he really believes what he is saying.

Popularity has crashed

But Blair's special magic, with its particular appeal to female voters, is no longer working. As East Africans would say, he has lost his ju-ju. Blair's once overwhelming popularity has crashed, and with it the fortunes of his Labour Party. For the first time in recent memory, Britain's politicians and voters are pondering life after Blair.

Iraq is the principal cause of Blair's fall from grace. Blair's justifications for invading Iraq were exposed as a pack of barefaced lies. His ludicrous claim that Iraq could attack Britain within 45 minutes with weapons of mass destruction made Blair look either a fool, which he is not, or an arch-schemer in an aggressive war to grab oil.

Interestingly, American voters proved far more forgiving than Britons of their government's lies and distortions. A majority of Americans didn't seem to care they were deceived into a war by a president who claimed Iraqi "drones of death" massed in the North Atlantic were about to spray germs across the sleeping United States. They just wanted revenge for the emasculating, humiliating 9/11 attacks. Iraq, however innocent, was a perfect whipping boy.

Two years later, Britons remain disgusted by Blair's unctuous untruths.

Unlike George W. Bush, Blair's reputation has been seriously damaged. He could still win re-election in May, but only because Britain's squabbling opposition Tories under Michael Howard have put on a pitifully inept performance that is almost as pathetic as their counterparts in Canada. Howard continues the post-Thatcher tradition of weak, stunted Tory leaders.

Failed to capitalize

Howard failed miserably to capitalize on Blair's rush to war, and failed to capture the spirit or votes of the 75% of Britons strongly opposed to the conflict. Instead, like John Kerry in the U.S., Howard jumped on the pro-war bandwagon.

Now, however, the feckless Howard is beginning to contemplate what seemed impossible -- becoming prime minister. Opinion polls show only a two-point gap between the parties. Had the Tories a stronger leader, Blair would be out of a job.

Britain badly needs new leadership. Its health system is rotten, trains constantly crash, large parts of the north are a dreary slum.

Blair has been so busy playing George W. Bush's Jeeves that he has neglected Britain's crumbling infrastructure. His Labour party rival, Gordon Brown, is just waiting to backstab Blair.

That Britain prospers, and its currency remains so strong, is due to Margaret Thatcher's reforms, not Blair's Labourites. Britain, in spite of outrageous prices, remains a haven in Europe of free enterprise and entrepreneurship.

But May elections are playing second fiddle right now to the coming royal nuptials of Prince Charles and Camilla Bowles. Alas, the wedding will be haunted by the ghost of Princess Diana.

Too many giddy British matrons remain infatuated by the media-hyped ghost of Lady Di. If ever there was a figure unworthy of being queen, it was she. Palace sources tell me she was a childish nitwit, bulimic, hysteric, obsessed by gothic romance, movie magazines, hairdressers and tawdry affairs with cads. Yet she has become, and remains, a semi-religious cult figure.

I hope the shy, sometimes goofy, but well-meaning King Charles and Queen Camilla (or princess, as the couple insists she will be called) exact lusty revenge on all the simpering snobs who insulted and belittled them for years. Off with their heads!

© 2005 Toronto Sun

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