Cracks in the veneer

Labour Party:

"Most of Mr Prescott's gaffes — failing to pronounce words properly, for instance — have a tendency to make him a figure of fun. But for the first time, it looks like he has made a slip that has much of the Labour Party and the country saying 'Good on you'. So it's ironic that he's now claiming that he never made it.

see previous post: Prescott: Bush is crap

In a statement last night, Mr Prescott stopped short of a total denial. He said: “This is an inaccurate report of a private conversation and it is not my view.”

Bush once said he would devote as many hours to securing peace in the Middle East as Mr Blair did in Northern Ireland, but he's done nothing like that. The Prime Minister's own frustration seemed to boil over during his recent visit to California, where he gave a speech saying that opportunities had been missed in the region, and he was not talking about his own efforts.
TIMES

John Prescott's use of the C-word about the Bush administration will remind Tony Blair that before he headed for the beach, he faced a cabinet revolt over his support for George Bush on the Middle East.

The uneasy ceasefire in the Lebanon bought him a breathing space, but he will return to a party still seething with anger at the way he has allowed Britain to be seen as "Bush's poodle".
The INDEPENDENT

The People:

Four out of five Britons believe the west is losing the "war against terror" and want Tony Blair to distance British foreign policy from the United States. The GUARDIAN

A new poll suggests that Britain is increasingly preparing for a long, bitter and potentially bloody struggle, with 60 per cent of respondents saying that they expected the threat from terrorist groups to worsen and 79 per cent arguing that the Government was not winning the war against terrorism.

A large majority, 86 per cent, predicted a terrorist attack within the next 12 months. TIMES

… by a margin of more than five to one - the public wants Tony Blair to split from President George W Bush and either go it alone in the "war on terror", or work more closely with Europe.

Some 69 per cent said that the police should be able to hold suspects for up to 90 days without charge, rather than be bound by the current 28-day limit. DAILY TELEGRAPH

Britain also has its economic woes. That the national economic outlook is sound is not reflected evenly through the population. Home loan defaults and bankruptcy are increasing at an alarming rate, driven by a £1,200bn consumer debt mountain.

Earlier this month, the Insolvency Service said a record 26,021 borrowers filed for bankruptcy between April and June. Two months ago Debt Free Direct, the debt adviser, estimated that 2 million people were facing irreversible financial problems while a recent report from the Financial Services Authority said almost 3 million consumers face a constant struggle to keep up debt repayments.

There is almost a sense that the terrorism issue, with its apparent immediacy, is a welcome diversion for most Brits. For Blair, at the moment, it is more like lose – lose. Whichever way he faces, as with his ‘coalition of the willing’ partners, there is only the prospect of policy failure.

But his greatest concern, having cemented old enmities within the EU, must be the public’s growing disenchantment with Bush’s America.