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Blair Loses Voters' Trust Over Kelly Affair: Poll
Arab News, Agence France Presse
LONDON, 30 August 2003 — More than half of Britons believe British Prime Minister Tony Blair cannot be trusted, according to a poll published a day after he dismissed claims of misleading the country over the war in Iraq.
A total 59 percent of Britons believe Blair cannot be trusted compared with 27 percent who say he can, according to a YouGov poll in The Daily Telegraph newspaper yesterday. Blair put his personal credibility on the line on Thursday over charges that his government exaggerated the case for war in Iraq, saying he would have resigned if that had been true. “If it were true it would have meant that we had behaved in the most disgraceful way, and I would have had to resign as prime minister,” Blair told a judicial inquiry into the presumed suicide of weapons expert David Kelly.
The Ministry of Defense named Kelly as the source of a BBC report that the government “sexed up” a September 2002 dossier on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction to help justify going to war. The scientist’s body was found with a slit wrist in woodland near his home on July 18, a week after he was named as the source.
According to the YouGov poll, 47 percent of respondents said their opinion of Blair had gone down as a result of the inquiry into Kelly’s death while the figure was 54 percent in relation to Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon. A total 36 percent said their opinion of the BBC had fallen. In relation to the government as a whole, only 22 percent felt “it has, on balance, been honest and trustworthy”, a fall of two percentage points since July, before the Kelly inquiry opened.
Meanwhile, the opposition Conservatives have failed to capitalise on the row over Iraq, making just one percentage point gain on the Labour government in the past month. According to the poll, 37 percent of respondents said they would vote Labour should a national election be held tomorrow, the same as in July, while 35 percent said they would back the Conservative party, up from 34 percent. YouGov interviewed 2,365 British adults online between Tuesday and Thursday.
European Reaction: Major newspapers in Europe drew varying conclusions from Blair’s testimony. Some viewed it as an admirable example of British democracy in action, while others saw an on-going crisis of credibility for the leader who took the country into the US-led war on Iraq.
“The Blair goverment is stepping over a corpse to sell its support for the ‘holy war’ to oust Saddam Hussein to its voters,” the Austrian daily Der Standard said.
In Germany, the Berliner Zeitung sniffed at Blair’s “arrogance.” “The image of the politician-manager who has all under control has been punctured, but so long as he keeps up his line of defense, he will stay in his post (even if there might yet be) new scapegoats,” it said.
In France, Le Figaro reported that the prime minister had put in “a robust performance.” But it asked: “Will it convince the British? That’s another matter.”
Hill Succeeds Campbell: Former Labour Party spokesman David Hill will succeed Alastair Campbell as chief of communications for Blair, Blair’s office said yesterday after Campbell announced his resignation. The premier’s office said Hill, who works in public relations, would “operate within a new structure” Blair is establishing for government communications.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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