Blair's ten-year reign

Tony Blair last week celebrated ten years as leader of Britain's Labour Party. There is no doubt at all that Mr Blair brought his party out of the political wilderness, modernised it, made it electable and shifted it to the political centre. He also successfully stole many policies from the Conservatives, such as sound economic management and tough attitudes towards law and order. In 1997 and 2001 he led his party to two landslide electoral victories, making him the first post-war Labour Prime Minister to be reelected to office, a remarkable achievement indeed.

There are many mixed views on just how successful Mr Blair's governments have been and some observers believe that Labour has done well in the last two elections only because of the disarray the Conservative Party has found itself in. There is a lot of truth in this, after all, if voters feel there is no viable alternative to the party in power, they will stick with the incumbent party.

However, it is certainly not fair to associate Mr Blair's success at the polls only with the poor state of the Conservatives. Mr Blair has done well in certain areas while some of his other policies have clearly failed. What is certain is that in 1997, after 18 years of Conservative rule, the electorate felt the time was right for a change, even though the Conservatives had brought about radical economic reform and turned around the British economy.

In government Mr Blair has shown that Old Labour is certainly a thing of the past. There has been no return to old-fashioned left-wing economic policies, the economy is doing well, inflation and unemployment are low and the labour market reforms brought about by the Conservatives have been maintained. Sound economic management has in fact been the hallmark of Mr Blair's governments.

Politically, Mr Blair has also introduced some bold initiatives, such as the granting of independence to the Central Bank, devolution to Scotland and Wales, a directly elected mayor of London with real powers, and the end of the conflict in Northern Ireland, although in the latter case he built on the success of his predecessor, John Major.

So why is Mr Blair and his government so unpopular at the moment? There are two main reasons: the war in Iraq and the state of public services in Britain. Mr Blair has on the whole pursued a most internationalist foreign policy. Under his leadership Britain participated in the military campaigns in Kosovo and Afghanistan and Mr Blair also sent troops to the Ivory Coast in an attempt to restore security there. These military campaigns on the whole went well and public opinion supported them.

The Iraqi war, on the other hand has been very controversial: no weapons of mass destruction have been found, the security situation in post-war Iraq is still hopeless and the recently released Butler report was heavily critical of the intelligence services. Many people believe Mr Blair deceived them in taking Britain to war - consequently the Labour Party did very badly in two by-elections last week, but it was the Liberal Democrats who benefited, not the Conservatives, which is good news for Mr Blair.

Mr Blair has not been very successful in improving Britain's public services, such as healthcare, education and public transport and he has been heavily criticised for this. However, because the Conservatives do not have a very good record in these areas, Mr Blair knows that he can still beat them on these key issues.

Now that the economy is no longer a divisive political issue, the Conservatives, who were once the only party to be trusted to properly manage the economy, have found it difficult to adapt to the changed political scenario. Considering that the country's electoral system makes it almost impossible for the Liberals to win an election, it looks like despite some odds, Mr Blair will be re-elected to office (if he is still party leader) at the next general election and the main issue then will, as usual, be the economy.

Alain JuppÉ has resigned as leader of the main French centre-right party, the ruling pro-Chirac UMP, paving the way for the popular Finance Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, to take over to and run for the Presidency in 2007. Not, however, if President Chirac gets his way. Mr Chirac and Mr Sarkozy are bitter rivals, the former representing the old guard of the centre-right and the latter the reformist, liberal, modernising element in the party. Mr Chirac was pushing for Mr Juppé to succeed him in three years' time but his (Juppé's) resignation over a corruption scandal has created a major problem for the President.

Mr Sakozy is popular with the French public and within his own party where it is estimated that between 80-90 per cent of UMP MPs would back him as party leader. He is regarded as a reformer and a no-nonsense politician. Before taking over the Finance Ministry he was Interior Minister, where his tough stance on law and order was popular.

The contrast between Mr Chirac and Mr Sarkozy couldn't be greater. President Chirac belongs to the older generation and was educated at the elite Ecole National d'Administration (ENA). He believes in an important state role in the economy, in he Franco-German partnership as the cornerstone of French foreign policy and in old-fashioned Gaullism. He was first elected to office in a rural area and is particularly protective of French agricultural interests.

The younger Mr Sarkozy, on the other hand, did not go to the ENA but studied law. He talks about the need to modernise and reform the French economy and would like to change France's 35-hour working week - whether he succeeds, of course, is another matter. He has hinted that the Franco-German relationship should not be such a privileged affair and wants to improve links to countries like the United States, Spain and Britain. Unlike Mr Chirac he began his political career not in a rural area but in a suburb of Paris.

The UMP will vote in a new leader in November and Mr Sarkozy will have to decide on whether he wants the top party job by September. Mr Chirac, who never forgave Mr Sarkozy for supporting Edouard Balladur in the 1995 presidential election, has publicly stated that should his Finance Minister be elected party leader he would sack him from the Cabinet. The President said in a recent interview: "No one is obliged to be a minister. If one of them is elected chairman, he must quit or I will immediately relieve him of his duties." This is a bit rich coming from a person who occupied the posts of party leader, Prime Minister and mayor of Paris all at the same time between 1986 and 1988.

Mr Chirac has in the past downplayed the threat posed by Mr Sarkozy saying: "There is no disagreement with Mr Sarkozy for one simple reason. I decide; he carries out my orders." This type of arrogance will surely backfire on the President. The more he tries to silence his popular Finance Minister, the more it will seem like the old guard is trying to stifle the reformist wing of the party. Furthermore, Mr Chirac must know that Mr Sarkozy is the UMP's greatest asset - sidelining him would only alienate the party faithful and play into the hands of the Opposition.