Sun May Finally Set on the Tories’ Empire

LONDON — Amid terrorist menace and the rumble of an approaching landslide, Britain votes today in a national election with strong signs that a new left will topple a Conservative establishment worn down by 18 years of power.

After repeated disruptive attacks on railroads, highways and airports, with a few token bombs and many hoaxes, the Irish Republican Army is a major election-day question mark.

Authorities have warned that new disruptions seem likely today. They will build one of the biggest protective security screens in British history to safeguard selection of a new 659-seat Parliament.

Terming himself “the eternal warrior against complacency,” favorite Tony Blair of the Labor Party wound up his campaign Wednesday with a call to keep up the pressure. Nevertheless, there was a quiet but clear mood of jubilance in the camp of a party that the 43-year-old Blair has turned into a more polished, social democratic mirror of its Conservative opponent.

“Don’t throw off success in one careless moment,” Conservative Prime Minister John Major appealed.

At the end of a lackluster campaign that failed to narrow Labor’s wide lead, the spirit was forlorn in the Major camp.

In the face of the IRA threat, the Major government has said a second day of balloting will be authorized in any area badly disrupted today.

The IRA, which seeks union of the Protestant-majority province of Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic, launched its terror blitz as campaigning started at the end of March. Repeatedly, coded phone calls have warned of bombs on railroad tracks, in rail stations and at major highway junctions, snarling the national traffic grid for long, frustrating and expensive hours.

Just enough small bombs have exploded--without injury--to make all threats credible enough to force evacuations and careful searches.

The disruptions express IRA fury at exclusion of its political wing from peace talks in Northern Ireland, but analysts say it might backfire despite all the publicity it has generated.

“IRA” amounts to a curse word in Britain this morning. People are angry, and all major parties have unreservedly condemned the IRA, limiting the room for postelection maneuvering.

Police, meanwhile, are becoming increasingly expert at assaying threats that typically arrive from phone booths as the morning rush hour builds. On Tuesday, one of the terminals at London’s Heathrow Airport was evacuated under threat and cleared for reentry in just 22 minutes.

Disruptions or no, to win its first election for a generation, Labor needs only a modest 4.5% vote swing today from the results of the Conservatives’ narrow 1992 victory.

The parties go before the United Kingdom’s 44 million voters today with the Conservatives, who have ruled Britain since 1979, trailing in opinion polls by about 20%.

Such a margin would give Labor an unprecedented 200-seat majority, but analysts do not believe that the final gap will be that large.

Under Paddy Ashdown, the Liberal Democrats, Britain’s third party, are expected to win 30 seats.

The photogenic reformer Blair, a strong-willed leader, has revitalized the working man’s Labor since taking control in 1994. He has modernized the look, the content and the membership of the party.

Along the way, he has scrapped historic socialist dogma, replacing it with support for the free market amid promises of tightly rationed public spending and more caring, efficient, cost-effective social policies.

In the past, prospects of a Labor victory would have sent chills through the business community. But on Wednesday, blue chips hit new highs in early trading on the London Stock Exchange.

Bookmakers list Labor as 1-9 favorites to win today. Except for the establishment Telegraph and the Daily Mail, all major national newspapers--including the Financial Times--are backing Blair.

Acceptance of Labor by many business leaders signals Blair’s victory on the question of trust, which has been the watchword of the campaign.

Britain is booming under policies such as privatization of some public services and industries controversially pioneered by Margaret Thatcher. The beleaguered Major, her heir, has warned repeatedly--to scant effect--that only renewed Conservative rule can ensure sustained growth and low inflation.

Having scuttled Labor’s Socialist past, Blair fought the campaign on down-home issues such as better education, more jobs, less crime, better pensions and a revivified national health system, that beloved but tarnished jewel of Britain’s welfare state.

Both parties support the welfare state in the context of a free-market system but differ on methods and over which would be a better manager.

The Conservatives have been wounded by internal division over Britain’s future role in Europe and by instances of corruption and sexual peccadilloes. Voters have repeatedly told pollsters that it is time for a change.

To the bemusement of many, the campaign has had a U.S.-influenced presidential feel to it, with carefully stage-managed appearances, artfully timed sound bites, endless electronic wizardry and sometimes puckish electioneering gimmickry.

The result successfully projected the young, smiling Blair against the stalwart, gray Major as if they were running one against the other--similar to Bill Clinton versus George Bush.

But they are not. Only voters in each man’s electoral constituency will find Tony Blair or John Major on their paper ballot. In Britain, the prime minister is the leader of the majority party in Parliament. It is the number of seats each party wins that determines who governs, not the victory of any single individual.

Closely watched individual races include those where a handful of Conservative Cabinet members could lose their seats. In another race, a veteran TV foreign correspondent is running as an anticorruption candidate against a former Conservative minister who accepted cash-filled envelopes from the owner of Harrods.

And in Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein, the political arm of the IRA, expects to win three seats, including one for its leader, Gerry Adams.

Another quirk of the British system from the American perspective is that there is no postelection transition. Today’s winner will become prime minister Friday. No bustle, though, to change the pictures at British legations around the world: Queen Elizabeth remains head of state.

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Election Fact Sheet

The British election will name a new 659-seat Parliament today. The leader of the party that controls Parliament will become prime minister.

* The contenders: Incumbent Conservative Party led by Prime Minister John Major against opposition Labor Party led by Tony Blair and third party Liberal Democrats led by Paddy Ashdown.

* The Threat: Terrorists of the Irish Repuiblican Army might distrupt the election.

* The numbers: Labor can win with only 4.5% more votes than it had in 1992.

* The polls: All show Labor winning a majority in Parliament that could be 100 members or more.

* The big issue: Trust. Conservatives riding an economic boom say only they, not historically tax-and-spend Labor, can be trusted to continue it. Labor says it has changed while Conservatives are inefficient, stained by sleaze.

* The core concerns: Schools, the national health system, jobs, pensions, crime. Each says it can do the right things better.

Source: Times London Bureau