Whats happened to Tony Blair?
BELFAST, North Ireland British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who stood fast with the United States in the Iraq war, is suffering a sharp decline in poll numbers and support among some of his own government ministers. Sounding Churchillian in his pro-war statements, Blair is now experiencing the kind of drop in public opinion that affected Winston Churchill’s political future following World War II (and the first President Bush following the Persian Gulf War). Last week, Blair reshuffled his cabinet in an effort to turn things around. One Tory Member of Parliament told me that Blair is beginning to suffer from “Margaret Thatcher syndrome,” suggesting that, like Thatcher, Blair has stayed too long on the political stage and people are growing tired of him. An indication of how serious things may be for Blair comes in two polls commissioned by the Times of London. One shows that one-third of the British people no longer trust Blair as a result of the way he handled the Iraq War. The peculiar
