Blair heads for victory

Tony Blair looked on course to win a historic third term as British Prime Minister in yesterday's election but with a hugely reduced parliamentary majority as voters punished him over Iraq.

A television exit poll issued as polling stations closed at 2100 GMT (11 p.m. Malta time) predicted Mr Blair will have a majority of only 66 seats in the 646-seat Parliament, down from 161 last time.

That could curb his authority in his third term, when he will try to persuade Eurosceptic Britons to approve the EU constitution and will probably oversee the withdrawal of some 8,000 British troops from Iraq.

The exit poll, for main television broadcasters the BBC and ITV, predicted that Mr Blair had become only the second prime minister in British history after Margaret Thatcher to win three elections in a row. He will also become the first Prime Minister to win three consecutive terms for Labour, the socialist party founded a century ago, and now the dominant force of the British centre-left.

Exit polling is not an exact science. In the 1992 election, for example, surveys of voters at the exit of polling stations predicted a Labour victory which never materialised.

The outcome should be clear by this morning.

"If the exit poll holds true this is incredibly bad news for Blair," said Mark Wickham-Jones, senior lecturer in politics at Bristol university. "The result is much better than the Conservatives thought they were going to get.

"There is a sense in which this election has been a referendum on Blair and I think it is going to leave him considerably weakened," he said.

"My guess is it really hastens Blair's departure... He may not be there at Christmas."

Mr Blair, who celebrates his 52nd birthday today, has been called a liar and a poodle of US President George W. Bush over Iraq, and has suffered countless rebellions in his own party.

But the youthful, articulate lawyer has refused to apologise for the war and based his campaign for re-election on Labour's record of steady economic growth, low interest rates, benign inflation and modest unemployment.

If he wins, Mr Blair's first task will be to form a new Cabinet today.

Britain hosts a group of eight (G8) summit of world leaders in July, assumes the presidency of the European Union (EU) the same month and is scheduled to hold a crucial referendum on the new EU Constitution in 2006. Iraq seems certain to haunt Mr Blair further.

More than two years after the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, the country is still racked by violence which has claimed the lives of more than 80 British soldiers.

Most Britons opposed the war and many believe it was illegal. A million people marched through London's streets in early 2003 in a bid to stop it happening.

Mr Blair, nicknamed "Teflon Tony" for his ability to shake off controversy, has weathered the protests and the results of four Iraq-related inquiries which undermined his public trust.

But he still faces possible legal challenges over the war.

Mr Blair must also decide when to hand over power.

He has already said a third term would be his last and his critics say that by ruling out a fourth term, he will be a lame duck leader whose government will be riven by in-fighting between potential successors.

The clear favourite to take over before the next election is Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, the main architect of Labour's economic policies.

Mr Blair cast his own vote in the northern English constituency of Sedgefield shortly before news of two small explosions in front of the skyscraper housing the British consulate in New York, briefly jangling nerves back home.

With no one hurt and no immediate claim of responsibility, security experts said it looked like a publicity stunt rather than a serious attack.

If the exit poll is correct, Michael Howard's opposition Conservatives, the once mighty party of Thatcher, Benjamin Disraeli and Winston Churchill, face a third consecutive term in the political wilderness.

The poll predicted the Conservatives had gained 44 seats. Charles Kennedy's Liberal Democrats, the only mainstream party to oppose the war, gained just two.