LONDON, May 6: The Iraq invasion inflicted serious damage on the Labour Party in Britain’s general election as Muslim voters ousted a loyal ally of Prime Minister Tony Blair in London and boosted the anti-war Liberal Democrats. Labour won an unprecedented third successive election victory on Thursday, but lost its dominant majority, whittled down in part by public disaffection over Iraq, despite Mr Blair’s efforts to sideline the issue during campaigning.

Tactical voting by Muslim voters angry over Iraq played a role in denting Prime Minister Tony Blair’s majority, the Muslim Association of Britain said on Friday.

“The results of the general election have clearly reflected the depth of frustration and anger throughout the country as to the government’s position on Iraq,” said the MAB, a Muslim campaign group.

The worst thrashing over the March 2003 invasion was suffered by Oona King, the Labour incumbent in the heavily Muslim district of Bethnal Green and Bow, who was defeated by the anti-war lawmaker George Galloway. Mr Galloway, thrown out of the Labour Party two years ago over his virulent opposition to the war, ran on a Respect coalition ticket and beat King by a mere 823 votes, overturning her 10,000-vote majority from the 2001 polls.

“Mr Blair, this is for Iraq. All the people you killed, all the lies you’ve told, have come back to haunt you,” he told cheering supporters following the announcement.

Mr Galloway, who previously represented a Scottish constituency, specifically targeted King because her working-class seat contains an estimated 40 percent of Muslim voters, mainly of Bangladeshi origin.

Oona King, who is half-Jewish and half-black, won her seat in 1997 at only 30 years of age and a strong re-election mandate in 2001, but courted disfavour with locals by supporting the US-led invasion.

“I’m not pro-war; I’m anti-genocide,” she said during the campaign, insisting she had long been critical of Saddam, unlike Mr Galloway, who had been on friendly terms with the Iraqi leader.

Mr Blair has acknowledged that Britons remain divided over the conflict, but on Friday said that he felt they wanted to “move on” and look toward the future.

The vote results indicate otherwise, countered the Liberal Democrats, pointing to the “significant impact” the party had on battles across the country, where its candidates often gained in the popular vote although they did not win.

“I attribute some of that to the anti-war platform, but our other policies have also played a significant role,” deputy party president Fiyaz Mughal said.

“In areas where there are higher minority populations, which will primarily vote for us because of Iraq, you’re having major swings,” Mr Mughal said, pointing to areas like immigrant-heavy Hornsey and Wood Green, London, where the Liberal Democrat candidate overcame a gap of more than 12,000 votes to oust a Labour incumbent.

“There is clearly a lot of disaffection among British Muslims about the Iraq war, the application of draconian anti-terror laws and the manner in which sections of the media have used sensationalism to stigmatize our entire community,” Iqbal Sacranie, the secretary general of the umbrella organization the Muslim Council of Britain, said in a statement.

The council, which had urged the country’s 1.6 million Muslims to vote, said the results showed that Iraq had clearly become a “mainstream concern”.

Analysts said the Iraq question affected non-Muslim voters by undermining Blair’s trustworthiness. The premier “lost the public relations war,” Chris Brown at the London School of Economics said.—AFP