A carestia de vida e novas taxas bancárias aliadas ao imparável aumento dos combustíveis deitaram quase por terra o governo de Gordon Brown. Os Trabalhistas perderam 331 lugares nas autarquias, os Conservadores conquistaram 256 e os Liberais são a segunda força eleitoral do país. Os comentadores politicos revelam muita desorientação estratégica no partido até à pouco liderado por Tony Blair. Há os que desvalorizam o significado nacional do voto-sanção das Municipais deste fim de semana. Contudo, a eleição de um desconcertante jornalista- ex-editor do conservador semanário Spectator e colunista do The Daily Telegraph- para a autarquia de Londres, a maior da Europa e com um orçamento anual de 12 biliões de Euros, pode ser o princípio do fim do ciclo eleitoral da esquerda britânica no poder.
A Imprensa norte-americana e o The Observer, edição dominical do The Guardian- focam a personalidade controversa, iconoclasta e brejeira, cujas piadas já lhe causaram imensos dissabores na vida política , do novo edil de Londres, Boris Jonson, que admite ter snifado coca e se arriscou a mandar imprimir este slogan eleitoral despudoardo: Se votar nos conservadores as mamas da sua sócia crescem e pode vir a comprar um BMW "…
Colorful Tory beats Red Ken in London
By Sarah Lyall
The New York TimesSaturday,
May 3, 2008
Boris Johnson, the floppy-haired media celebrity and Conservative member of Parliament who transformed himself from a shambling, amusing-aphorism-uttering figure of fun into a plausible political force, will be the new mayor of London.
Johnson's surprising victory was not only a triumph of his own singular style, but also a resounding public rebuke to the Labour government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown in a day full of such rebukes. As votes were tallied across the country following the elections Thursday, it emerged that the Labour Party had suffered its worst local election results in at least 40 years.
With final votes in for the 159 local councils in which seats were being contested, Labour lost 331 seats overall, and the Conservative opposition gained 256. The Labour Party took an estimated 24 percent of the overall vote, placing it a woeful third behind the Conservatives, with 44 percent, and the Liberal Democrats, with 25 percent.
But it was the mayoral race, in which Johnson, 43, defeated the experienced Labour incumbent, Ken Livingstone, 62, by 1,168,738 votes to 1,028,966 votes, that was the biggest shock - a sure sign of a deep national weariness with the Labour government.
Livingstone, known as "Red Ken" since his early days in politics for his leftist views, was seen as increasingly authoritarian, isolated and prickly. His efforts to write off Johnson as a lightweight buffoon failed to pay off, and by the time he began attacking his opponent on the substance of issues like the cost of the Tories' transportation program, it was too late.
But running for office and governing are two different things. When he was the editor of the magazine Spectator and a columnist for The Daily Telegraph, Johnson, a graduate of Eton and Oxford, affected a chaotic personal style and frequently landed in scrapes that he sweet-talked his way out of. Now he is suddenly in charge of a $21.7-billion budget and a complicated city - Europe's largest - filled with competing agendas and political accidents waiting to happen.
London has been resolutely Labour in recent years, and its loss is a bitter blow to the national party and a lift for David Cameron, leader of the Conservatives.
"This was the first big test of Gordon Brown and David Cameron," Stephan Shakespeare, a co-founder of YouGov, a polling company, said. "We've had a lot of ups and downs, a lot of debate and a lot of polling, and until this moment the general feeling of malaise that hung over this government hasn't been made concrete or specific. Now it has. It shows that something has profoundly changed in British politics."
But historically, poor results for the governing party in local British elections are not necessarily harbingers of poor results in subsequent general elections.
"We've been here before," said Patrick Dunleavy, a professor of political science and public policy at the London School of Economics. "It's a bad time for the government, but not nearly so bad that the government couldn't recover, even as early as spring 2009."
By law, the next general election can be held no later than 2010.
In his colorful career, Johnson has survived public airing of an extramarital affair whose existence he originally denied as an "inverted pyramid of piffle"; has apologized to whole cities, like Liverpool, that he offended in one way or another; and has been prone to saying things like: "Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3."
He has developed a reputation for having a fearsome but unserious intellect and for wading into and out of embarrassing scrapes. But a man who has previously poked fun at the political process - saying "I can't remember what my line on drugs is. What's my line on drugs?" and "I'm backing David Cameron's campaign out of pure, cynical self-interest" - has been kept under a tight rein this time around, sticking to issues like crime and transportation.~
After the votes were read out - under the British system, the losers stand in public alongside the winner as the results are announced - Johnson gave a sober and gracious victory speech. He acknowledged that many Londoners, even some who had voted for him, had misgivings about his qualifications for the job, but pledged to "work flat-out" to earn their trust.~
"Tomorrow we'll work like crazy," said Johnson, who gave up alcohol during the campaign, "but tonight we'll have a drink."
Except in the case of the mayoral contest, the election results were more important for their symbolism than for their substance. Local councils have little actual power, but British voters tend to use local elections to express relative degrees of displeasure with the government in office.
In this case, the public expressed a high degree of displeasure - with the economy, with 11 years of Labour rule, and with Brown himself.
"It's a real disaster," said John Curtice, a professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. "It is a comment on what has proven to be the failure of the Labour government to get itself out of the mess that Tony Blair left it in."
The prime minister admitted bluntly that the result was terrible, as did an array of cabinet ministers dispatched to spread the message that the government was listening to the public and would try to improve.
"This has been a disappointing night - indeed, a bad night - for Labour," Brown said. "We have lessons to learn from this, and then we will move forward. My job is to listen and to lead, and that is what I will do."
Cameron spoke happily about the future of his party, out of power since Blair swept into office in 1997.
"I think these results are not just a vote against Gordon Brown and his government, but are a vote of positive confidence in the Conservative Party," Cameron said. He said that the results proved that the Conservatives were ready to win the next general election.
Labour lost some councils in the north, a traditional stronghold, and was hurt by the tendency of Conservative voters who had voted for Blair's Labour Party more than a decade ago to go back to the Tories.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/03/europe/britain.php
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