The War at Home

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The grainy videotape showed 11 minutes of a blindfolded, sobbing man pleading for his life. "I don't want to die," said Kenneth Bigley, a British engineer taken hostage by Islamic extremists in Baghdad. Two American men kidnapped at the same time had already been beheaded on camera. Bigley appealed directly to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. "You are the only person on God's earth who can help me. Please free female prisoners held in Iraqi prisons." Blair refused to bargain with the kidnappers, which made Kenneth's brother Paul bitter. "If my brother dies, his blood is on Blair's hands," he said. "The government say they can't negotiate with terrorists, but that is exactly what they did with the I.R.A." Blair, preparing for a party conference he hoped might allow him to leave Iraq behind, didn't have to work hard to convince most people that a group that exults in televised decapitation is beyond negotiation.

The crisis shows why there are two British Prime Ministers gearing up for the general election expected next May. One faces a feckless and disunited opposition and consistently tops opinion surveys, even when his policies are being cluster bombed in the newspapers. The other faces a much harder task. Polls by MORI show that 61% are dissatisfied with him, and only 32% trust him to tell the truth. Old allies have abandoned him; rivals leak venomously to bring him down. Both, of course, are Tony Blair, who won huge majorities for Labour in 1997 and 2001. This time he'll have a tougher race, which informally kicks off at the Labour conference this week.

The mother of all his troubles is Iraq. Bigley's misery (as Time went to press, his fate was unknown) showed how easy it will be for terrorists in coming months to mock Blair's insistence that Iraq is on the right road, and to drown out the domestic themes to which Labour voters want him to return. To add to his troubles, a MORI poll published Sunday showed a four-point drop for Labour, to 32%, meaning the Conservatives are in the lead (at 33%) for the first time in years — and the Liberal Democrats are up four points to 25%, which puts Labour in a two-front battle next spring that could turn out far closer than many have predicted.

On every front, Iraq's problems are lapping higher for Blair. Two weeks ago, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan bluntly declared the war illegal. The Iraq Survey Group is shortly expected to report formally that the weapons of mass destruction on which Blair based his case for war cannot be found. An eccentric but still damaging motion to impeach him for misleading Parliament over Iraq is making some waves. Recently leaked documents show that senior colleagues had warned him that Washington's postwar plans were inadequate, and that terrorism would likely increase after a war — something he did not tell the country at the time.

Looking unusually defensive, Blair used a press conference with Iraq's interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, to plead for putting all that in the past. "Whatever the disagreements about the first conflict in Iraq to remove Saddam, this conflict now is the crucible in which the future of this global terrorism will be determined," he said. But with his standing damaged by the news from Baghdad, his power to persuade is limited — as was obvious from the buoyant spirits at the Liberal Democrats' conference last week. The only major party to oppose the war, its credibility has been enhanced. "We are moving from a party of protest to a party of power," said leader Charles Kennedy. "Three-party politics are here to stay."

Or at least they appear that way. Blair strategists hope that Labour's stutter in the polls will inspire some closing of ranks. At the party conference this week, says a Blair confidant, he can't and won't apologize about the war, nor can he wave it away; "You ain't gonna get closure" on it, he sighs. So Blair "will re-explain his case for going into Iraq," he says, then flag up some enticing new domestic policies, like measures to increase home ownership and fight disorderly behavior. The economy is strong, and the MORI poll shows that people are getting more optimistic that Labour can deliver on its long-promised improvements in health and education. "The question for the Labour Party is whether it can aim for a Rooseveltian term of office," says Denis MacShane, Labour's Minister for Europe, referring to F.D.R.'s renewal of his Administration's energy and policies during his long presidency. But even as Labour eyes another four years in power, the contrast between Roosevelt's war and Blair's has to make them feel a little nervous.