Since day one of the campaign, the outcome of the June 7 vote was all but certain: no moving vans were going to be pulling up to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s official residence at 10 Downing Street; Blair’s Labour Party would stroll easily back into in power. So not surprisingly, it was the lack of suspense-and not the thrill of a raucous campaign-that colored the mood in London on the eve of the country’s venture to the polls.
On Oxford Street, one of the city’s busiest shopping districts, electioneering was far from foremost in people’s minds. Forget Labour leaflets or angry anti-Blair ads from the opposition Conservatives. On Oxford Street the placards were about pub-lunch specials and half-price theater tickets. “If I hadn’t been watching television or reading newspapers, I wouldn’t know that there was an election going on,” says Barrie Grieveson, 45, who runs a fruit stall. “Politicians are taking it for granted that this is a landslide election. Tomorrow is the election-and I’m yet to see anyone campaigning on the street.”
For the record, Grieveson says he will vote Labour, anyway. That’s good news for the politicians and commentators who are wringing their hands over the question of voter apathy. They’re worried about people like Jon Ray, a 27-year-old construction worker who was having lunch along Oxford Street on Wednesday. “I don’t really see the point in getting involved,” says Ray, “because Labour is going to landslide.” That sort of attitude was prevalent enough that some pollsters were forecasting the lowest voter turnout since before World War II.
Labour fears there will be too few Barrie Grievesons trooping to the polls on Thursday. The party had been hoping for a resounding victory, one even bigger than its thrashing of the Tories in 1997, when Blair and his party ended 18 years of Conservative rule. But the latest polls are worrisome. One by the MORI research organization shows only 60 percent of the respondents saying they are certain to vote. Though few people expect the actual turnout to be that low, it is widely assumed, rightly or wrongly, that the figure will be below the 72 percent level of four years ago. That’s bad news for Blair, whose campaign strategists wanted an iron mandate and a majority even bigger than the 179 members his party enjoyed in the last Parliament. The lower the turnout, the harder that will be to pull off.
The reasons behind the disinterest are complex. A healthy economy (a million new jobs have been created during Blair’s term, for instance) and a world at peace has lulled many would-be voters into complacency. It might be different if a powerful, assertive opposition were taking Labour to task day after day. The Conservatives have tried, but their attacks-led their ineffectual if dogged leader William Hague and seconded by former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, lured out of retirement for the battle-have not even dented Labour’s armor. Their attacks are made all the more difficult by the fact that Labour has occupied much of the ideological center ground that once belonged to the Tories. “There is not a lot to divide the parties,” explains Iain Dale, owner of Politico’s Bookstore. “New Labour has moved on to conservative territory, which is a problem for the Conservatives, because they have no place to go.” The Tories, in fact, are looking almost like a third party these days. The Liberal Democrats, who are closer to Labour than to the Conservatives, are gaining on Hague’s party and could get a lot of mileage out of Thursday’s election.
Another source of voter disenchantment is Blair’s failure to truly connect with the electorate during the campaign. He gets a lot of credit for transforming “new” Labour into the prudent, business-friendly party it has become. But his ardent pleas on the hustings to get out the vote have yet to cause much of a stir. He is, in a real sense, a victim of his own success-and Tory ineptitude. “The Tories haven’t come up with anything for people to turn around and vote for them,” says Tina Williams, a 43-year-old secretary. Williams’s analysis was as sophisticated as any pollster’s: “People are just thinking, well, they’re in now, just let them stay.” Which is almost certain to be the case when the polls close here at 10 p.m. Thursday.
