Will Brown be Truman?
Since the already weakening British Labor Party dumped Tony Blair, its new leader, current Prime Minsiter Gordon Brown has gone from disaster to disaster. Successive election losses in traditional Labor bastions including the London Mayoralty have confirmed the polls that say that a significant plurality of British voters are shifting Conservative (45%-26% according to the most recent one).
His most recent effort appears to be similarly doomed. Currently, British law allows the police to hold terrorism suspects for 28 days. The Government is calling for that limit to be extended to 42 days. This change is widely opposed. The Conservative Party is attacking it from the right while the Liberal Party is hitting it from the left. Former Conservative Prime Minister, John Major, has called it an attack on British rights founded with the Magna Carta, and says this is just part of the Blair-Brown strategy which has taken the UK into war in Iraq and onwards. Almost as problematically for Brown, 50 Labor members of Parliament are considering opposing the bill. If as many as 33 do, then it would fail.
In the midst of this political battle however, Gordon Brown finds himself being with unusual allies - the British public. In the same poll that showed the voters widely desirous of alternative leadership, a massive majority disagrees with the alternative parties and supports Brown’s proposed law change. Brown has thus far shown a remarkable inability to capitalize on potential political advantages or shore up his liabilities, but he possesses now an opportunity. He is in a politician’s dream situation; on the popular side of the issue with all his opponents arrayed against him, and low expectations to boot.