Tony Blair's last gamble

It seems so ironic. Last year Tony Blair led his Labour Party to a historic third consecutive electoral victory. It was not only an excellent result for the once unelectable Labour Party but also a personal victory for Tony Blair, who completely changed the face of Labour, moved it towards the political centre and made it the natural party of government.

Last week, however, which happened to be a terrible week (politically) for Mr Blair, voters deserted Labour and delivered a crushing blow to the governing party in England's local elections. It was the worst result for Labour in a local election since the 1960s.

In response to this poor result Mr Blair announced a massive Cabinet reshuffle, the most wide-ranging in his nine years in Downing Street. Some will say that the reshuffle proved Mr Blair was panicking but, on the other hand, if no reshuffle had taken place the Prime Minister would have been severely criticised, especially by his own backbench MPs.

The main victim of the reshuffle was Home Secretary Charles Clarke - who has been under fire over the release of foreign prisoners - who is returning to the back benches after refusing alternative Cabinet job offers. He will be replaced by Defence Secretary John Reid, who is being replaced by Des Brown, the Chief Secretary at the Treasury.

The other victim is John Prescott, who although remaining Deputy Prime Minister, has been stripped of his departmental responsibility, which means he is no longer responsible for areas such as housing, local government, urban policy and regions. Mr Prescott's main strength is his link to the party's left and working class voters, and certainly not ministerial capability, so that would explain his new role.

Other interesting developments include the demotion of Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to Leader of the House of Commons, perhaps because of his association with the Iraqi war fiasco. He will be replaced by two Cabinet Ministers, Margaret Beckett, previously Environment Secretary, as Foreign Secretary and Geoff Hoon (previously Leader of the House) as Secretary of State for Europe. This is the first time that the Minister for Europe has been given a Cabinet seat and shows the importance Mr Blair attaches to Europe.

Despite Mr Blair's general election victory in 2005, a year is a long time in politics, especially British politics. Ever since Mr Blair announced that he was not going to seek a fourth mandate at the polls he has become more or less a lame duck prime minister. Many of his own Labour MPs urged him to step down and make way for his successor, Gordon Brown.

Others deserted him on key pieces of health and education legislation, while some left-wing MPs wanted him to go as a price for having taken Britain into war in Iraq.

The opposition Conservatives, on the other hand, finally elected a new leader who seemed to be in tune with voters' needs, David Cameron, who has made inroads with the electorate by modernising his party.

After nine years in office, the strain on the Labour government was starting to show and its competence over the management of public services has been called into question.

Last week was a particularly bad one for Mr Blair, with major blunders committed by his government over the release of a thousand foreign criminals, troubles in the National Health Service and the ongoing cash-for-peerages affair.

Furthermore, there were also the revelations about deputy prime minister John Prescott's extramarital affairs - which matter in Britain, unlike in continental Europe. These disclosures were also damaging because, in opposition, Mr Prescott used to taunt Conservative politicians who had extramarital affairs, often urging them to resign, and so one would expect the deputy prime minister to practise what he preaches.

Thursday's local election dealt a particularly heavy blow to Labour, which lost about 200 council seats, most of which went to the Conservatives, who got their best local election result in 14 years. The share of the vote was approximately 40 per cent for the Conservatives, 27 per cent for the Liberal Democrats and 26 per cent for Labour.

The Conservatives gained control of 12 new councils - and did particularly well in London - while Labour lost control of 18. The election brought little good news for the Liberal Democrats, who gained control of three new councils but lost two others.

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the election result was the fact that the right-wing British National Party (BNP) won 11 seats from Labour on the Barking council and also won seven other council seats in the country.

Barking is a typical East London working class district and for Labour to lose seats to the BNP sends out alarm signals. It means that working class white voters feel abandoned by Labour over issues such as immigration and public services, something Labour minister Margaret Hodge had suggested during the campaign.

The fact that these voters switched their allegiance to the BNP and not to the Conservatives, for example, is very worrying indeed.

Will Mr Blair's Cabinet reshuffle overshadow Labour's poor performance in the local election and relaunch the struggling government? Some analysts believe that the government has simply lost its way and is led by a Prime Minister who has lost his authority.

Many of Mr Blair's backbench MPs now want him to announce the date of his departure so that the party will have enough time to focus on winning the next general election. The Prime Minister's allies, on the other hand, will argue that governments always do badly in local elections and the results were not a vote against Mr Blair but a protest vote against aspects of the government's latest performance.

Conservative Shadow Chancellor George Osborne said: "This reshuffle is an attempt to cover up very bad losses for Tony Blair and Labour in the local elections and very good results for David Cameron and the Conservative Party."

Former Labour Health Secretary Frank Dobson said a reshuffle would be like "rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic". "Quite frankly we need the party under new management," he said.

What is certain is that this reshuffle is Mr Blair's last chance to try to get things moving again. A lot will depend on what type of support the prime minister gets from his backbenchers, especially from supporters of Chancellor Gordon Brown, and whether he will have to continue relying on the opposition Conservatives to support him on certain legislation.

Of course, no politician stays in office for ever, and Mr Blair's days are clearly numbered. If his own MPs want to undermine his authority and replace him shortly, so be it. I still believe, however, that on balance Mr Blair will go down in history as one of Britain's greatest prime ministers; but I'll write about that on another occasion.