Blair regains momentum with Archer exit
By Edna Fernandes
LONDON (Reuters): For British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the past week has been a politician's dream -- a future baby to kiss and the sight of opponents twisting slowly in the wind.
The timing could not be better, coming in the same week that a poll showed support for Blair's Labor Party falling to 44 percent -- its lowest level since winning power in 1997.
The shift in political winds sets Blair on course for a new parliamentary session which many regard as the opening shot of a long range campaign for a general election within 18 months.
For the opposition Conservative Party, there is nothing it can do about the baby which Blair's 45-year-old wife announced she is expecting next May.
There also appears little it can do except squirm over best- selling novelist Jeffrey Archer's withdrawal as Conservative candidate from the London mayor race over a perjury scandal.
Archer's confession last Saturday that he asked a friend to lie to lawyers in connection with a sex scandal dating back 13 years has turned around political fortunes in the mayor race and nationwide given the Blair government new momentum.
After weeks of exploiting Labor's failure to block leftwinger Ken Livingstone from standing for London mayor, Conservative leader William Hague now finds his political credibility on the line.
"The real lesson of that, of course, is the judgment of Mr Hague," Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott told the BBC.
"Mr Archer told him 'I'm not a saint, if you're going to elect me bear that in mind'...He was the man that endorsed him once he'd been elected."
Archer's ignominious exit takes the spotlight off weeks of negative press for Blair over his handling of issues from Britain's beef row with France to how his wife Cherie dresses to complaints that the prime minister is a "control freak".
Hague had at last seemed to be hitting home with sharp attacks on Blair for his lack of progress on improving health transport and education, while criticizing the prime minister's tight control of who would be Labor's London mayor candidate.
Blair's attempts to refocus the debate on Britain's booming economy and side-step Hague's other successful attack on why Britain should not enter the euro were making little progress.
The slim political gains evaporated with the Archer scandal.
The staunchly Conservative Sunday Telegraph newspaper accused the Conservative leadership of "fatal frivolity", in squandering recent progress.
"Last week Mr Hague observed wittily that Ken Livingstone was Mr Blair's 'night-mayor'. He is eating his words today. Compared to Mr Archer, Mr Livingstone is a sweet dream," the paper's editorial said.
The Conservative Party, desperate to distance itself from the culture of sleaze which helped it lose the 1997 general election, finds itself vulnerable again to attacks which are certain to continue up to and including a general election
In contrast, Blair 's fortunes with the media have witnessed a turnaround, helped not only by the Conservatives mayoral disaster but also the news that he and his wife Cherie are to have a fourth child.
News of the baby -- the first to be born to a serving prime minister for more than a century -- came on the day Livingstone made it to the shortlist to run as Labor's mayoral candidate. Baby Blair promptly knocked Livingstone off the front page.
The new baby will be born next May -- the month of the mayoral election.