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Campaign analysis: Friday May 6
Daniel Forman's daily diary of the election campaign.
Friday May 6, 9:45am
Tony Blair went to bed this morning bloodied if not exactly brutalised.
Even his own home secretary conceded Labour's endorsement was far from "ringing".
His majority was lower than most pundits and pollsters expected while the surrender of strongholds such as Hornsey and Withington showed the startling effect of Iraq.
It seems almost impossible now that the prime minister will serve his full third term, especially as he has little mandate to carry out the kind of reforms that would actually excite him.
The jury is also out as to whether the electorate did endorse the war.
The morning after the night before is probably the worst time to try to pick out the lessons of the poll but some early conclusions can be drawn.
One is that the public seemed determined to defy expectations. Where Tory shadow Cabinet members were predicted to lose they did not, and the one who was thought to be safe, Tim Collins, went down.
At the same time where Tuesday's ICM poll had Labour saving Shipley and losing Finchley the reverse was actually true.
And Birmingham, expected to be the scene of a Tory breakthrough in the big cities, stubbornly refused to conform.
Secondly the Lib Dems clearly did better in the north, Scotland and Wales, where their anti-war, left-wing message plays well, than in the south.
This presents a problem for continued third party progress, especially if Labour does tack back to the left under Gordon Brown.
Thirdly a decline in tactical voting cost Labour in areas such as London and the Lib Dems in many of their Tory targets. In the cold light of day this may force them to re-assess their refusal to cooperate now that anti-Tory feeling is finally on the wane.
Fourthly, Labour still won, by a majority most governments would have been more than happy with. And the Conservatives only put around 0.6 per cent on their share of the vote from a performance considered disastrous in 2001.
But momentum is everything in politics and it is no longer with Labour, at least not under Blair. Not because Labour lost seats but because it lost more than expected.
That presents a problem for any attempt to ratify the European constitution in a referendum and for bringing the parliamentary party into line.
Yet that could, conceivably, be the final challenge Tony Blair wants to round off his political career.
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