CBMs: not a final solution

“KASHMIR is no longer the core issue or on the top of the India-Pakistan agenda. It is now one of the confidence-building measures”. This is how Kuldip Nayar, a veteran Indian journalist and their “man for all seasons” perceives the Kashmir issue after the latest India-Pakistan summit in New Delhi.

In his post-summit op-ed piece in these columns (“Green light finally?” April 26), he also reveals to us that “the raging debate in India even days after the visit of President General Pervez Musharraf to Delhi is whether he has changed and if so why.” He then goes on to suggest that “there is ample evidence to underline that Islamabad’s policy towards New Delhi has undergone a change.”

According to Mr Nayar, a “preponderant majority” in India now believes that he (Musharraf) has come a long way from Agra and noticed “that he did not wear the uniform even once during his trip.”

Congratulations to the people of India. They should be grateful for this “remarkably preferential” treatment they received from our president. It was a special gesture to them. The people in Pakistan surely envy them because they know they are not destined to see him “sans uniforme” in the foreseeable future. At long last, India can now no longer complain of Pakistan denying it the “most-favoured-nation treatment (MFN).

With his multi-dimensional overview and eminent grasp of India-Pakistan affairs, I am sure Kuldip Nayar must have noticed that in Pakistan too, we have a “raging debate” going on but this one is on why India has not changed despite our complete u-turn in our traditional India policy and despite the utmost flexibility that our president has shown since January 2004 in our establishment’s “established” policy on Kashmir.

While in some circles, the growing people-to-people contacts and other CBMs appear to be the “only panacea” for all India-Pakistan ills, “the preponderant majority” of our people continue to believe that peace will remain elusive unless a serious effort is made to root out the real causes of instability in the region.

With total absence of any forward movement or visible progress on the key issues, including the “core one” in the New Delhi talks, the people in Pakistan remain caught in a serious dilemma and are still trying to figure out the real direction and sustainability of the current India-Pakistan peace process. They are also puzzled over India’s anxiety about whether or not Musharraf has changed — which only shows how much they are counting on one individual’s “decisive role and authority” in our system.

Among other things, Kuldip Nayar also gives us a familiar glimpse of India’s mindset by sharing with his readers the spontaneous remarks of a former prime minister of India, Mr Inder Kumar Gujral in response to the same question whether Musharraf had changed. Gujral reportedly said: “What options does he have? His country faces innumerable problems. He also finds India growing taller and taller. His friends, the Americans, have told him not to rock the boat.” Kuldip Nayar then goes on to surmise that India’s External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh had sensed this when he was in Washington two days before Musharraf’s arrival in Delhi.

These are unexceptionable observations as long as they represent a genuine understanding of the regional and global realities. Gujral is right that we have limited options. He is also right that we in Pakistan have innumerable problems that we need to address. Who doesn’t see India growing bigger and stronger? We cannot be oblivious of India’s growing stature as a political and economic giant. We also cannot deny the post-9/11 reality that our “friends,” the Americans, now have deeper than ever stakes in India-Pakistan rapprochement as a factor of stability for regional and global peace.

But this incisive perspective is equally applicable to India. In today’s turbulent world, India also has limited options and must make the correct choice. It will cease growing taller and taller if it remains entangled in a vicious cycle of conflict and violence emanating from its contentious and unresolved disputes with Pakistan.

Like Pakistan, India is also not immune from the new global dynamics resulting from the post-9/11 US engagement in South Asia, a region which is at the root of most of the world’s problems, ranging from inter-state and civil conflicts to festering disputes, human tragedies, violence, extremism and terrorism.

In his addresses to the UN General Assembly in September, 2002, President Musharraf himself acknowledged that with nuclear weapons now in the possession of both countries, it is small wonder that people describe South Asia as “the most dangerous place on earth” and that peace in this region cannot be allowed to remain hostage to “one accident, one act of terrorism or one strategic miscalculation.”

It is no secret that India and Pakistan, through intense political and diplomatic pressure by the US and other G-8 countries, returned to the conference table in January 2004 to resume their “composite” dialogue disrupted by Kargil in 1999. The former US secretary of state is on record claiming the “authorship” of the January 6, 2004, India-Pakistan joint statement.

In this spirit of bonhomie, both sides are talking of what they call “soft” or “irrelevant” borders. If the idea is to provide relief to the Kashmiri people in terms of reunion of their divided families, “softness” of the LoC does make sense, but beyond it, one cannot even imagine considering or making the India-Pakistan borders “irrelevant.” One hopes our side understands what it means to make the India-Pakistan borders “irrelevant.” Borders are always supposed to be the “firewall” of a sovereign state’s independence and territorial integrity.

Coming back to Kuldip Nayar, again, he considers politicians and bureaucrats in both countries as “the main problem for both Manmohan Singh and Musharraf.” According to him, “they are not fully sold on India-Pakistan conciliation,” and bureaucrats in particular, “are so entrenched that they “fiendishly enjoy” exaggerating even a minor difference between the two.” Does he mean that only the military in both countries is now “sold on India-Pakistan” conciliation?

In any case, given the past experience and volatile history of relations between the two countries, one must be careful in drawing conclusions or raising unrealistic hopes. Mistrust and apprehension on both sides are deep-rooted and will not evaporate simply by “thinking wishfully” or blowing out the flames. India and Pakistan will have to go beneath the fire to extinguish it at its source.

Confidence-building measures may be helpful to the process in terms of better atmosphere but are not a substitute for resolving disputes. No wonder, despite his unilateral overtures of flexibility, President Musharraf has also been warning that unless the underlying issues were resolved, conflict could erupt again. The task ahead is not an easy one. There should be no illusion about the complexity of the issues involved. We do need peace and must preserve it but should not rush into hasty “decisions” which may not be sustainable domestically in both countries with the change of governments or personalities.

We have had in these columns enough of microscopic analysis of the New Delhi joint statement of April 18, and any fresh attempt to dissect it anatomically might look to Kuldip Nayar another “fiendish exaggeration” of the India-Pakistan problems. However, official exaggerations of the real scale and scope of this statement warrant its quick comparison with the earlier India-Pakistan statements in terms of the “treatment of Kashmir.”

Of the 17 points in this statement, only one refers to the Jammu and Kashmir issue in which the two sides, while determining the “irreversibility” of the current process, claimed to have “addressed the issue of Jammu and Kashmir and agreed to continue these discussions in a sincere and purposeful and forward-looking manner for a final settlement.”

This paragraph is, however, “strategically” preceded by a more “explicit and categorical” reaffirmation by the two sides of the “commitments made in their joint press statement of January 6, 2004, and the joint statement issued after their meeting in New York on September 24, 2004.”

Both the 2004 statements are the basis of the current resumed dialogue process which is predicated on the fulfilment of Pakistan’s commitment “not to allow any territory under its control to be used to support terrorism in any manner,” and India’s “conditional” readiness to “sustain the composite dialogue process” provided Pakistan “prevented violence, hostility and terrorism from any territory under its control.”

Those who have ready access to the texts of the earlier India-Pakistan joint statements and declarations, namely, Tashkent (1966), Shimla (1972) and Lahore (1999), will find them containing far more meaningful and substantive formulations on the Kashmir issue with no conditionalities of any sort and kind.

Notably, the Lahore Declaration, a major peace-time mutual undertaking, was a genuine breakthrough in the history of the two countries, covering the full spectrum of their relations and issues. It recognized that “an environment of peace and security is in the supreme national interest of both sides and that the resolution of all outstanding issues, including Jammu and Kashmir, is essential for this purpose”. The two countries solemnly agreed to “intensify their efforts to resolve all issues, including the issue of Jammu and Kashmir” and also to “intensify their composite and integrated dialogue process for an early and positive outcome of the agreed bilateral agenda”.

A common feature in all these documents was a joint reaffirmation by India and Pakistan of their commitment to the principles and purposes of the charter of the United Nations. This is a conspicuous omission in the January 6, 2004, joint press statement although we have been clarifying subsequently that our position on the UNSC resolutions remains unchanged unless India was also ready to join us in exploring a mutually acceptable solution of the Kashmir issue which would also take into account the wishes of the Kashmiri people.

In Pakistan, we need to build a national consensus on our “changed” India policy. This would require transparency and domestic confidence-building through a genuine national effort for “debate and consensus” not in hotel lobbies but in parliamentary chambers with the participation of all relevant major political stakeholders in the country. It will strengthen government’s hands.

India has always had a clear advantage over us in terms of complete and uninterrupted political harmony on its policies towards Pakistan. For us, there are lessons to learn from the past. Initiatives for normalization with India could never reach their logical end for reasons known to all.

There could be no better opportunity for both India and Pakistan to turn over a new leaf in their embittered history. The process will have to be sustained with high-level political engagement from both sides, particularly in finding a settlement for the Kashmir dispute. The personal equation between the president of Pakistan and the prime minister of India as reflected in their recent exchange of mutual accolades is an encouraging factor. After their talks in New Delhi, the Indian prime minister described our president as “frank, forthright and forward-looking” and a person “he could do business with.” President Musharraf, on his part, lost no time in responding in kind and described the Indian prime minister as “a sincere person with whom he liked to work.” The two leaders have been singing mutual praise even in Jakarta where they were attending the Afro-Asian summit.

For the first time, the statements emanating at this level from the two capitals are music to the ears of the peoples of this region, so far accustomed only to polemics and rancour. We hope with this capital of “frankness and sincerity” which they have been able to heap together, the two leaders will be able to do some “purposeful business” and work together for genuine peace in the region.

In this process, they also need to be “sincere and forthright” with their own peoples, who now deserve more than “hollow words.” They must be taken into confidence on the internal and external costs of their confrontational policies and on the “options” they now plan to pursue during their on-going “composite” dialogue for a final settlement of the Kashmir issue.

The writer is a former foreign secretary

A well-kept secret

I WONDER why nobody ever tells us how many billions the ten richest men in Pakistan possess. You will read in newspapers a list of the ten richest men in America published regularly by Forbes Magazine and Fortune.

The latest was picked up from Fortune some days ago. Reports are also published about the most moneyed persons in Britain, Germany and Japan, even Australia, but never about anyone from Pakistan or India. Why?

There is a reason why our Croesuses never disclose to anyone how much wealth they have accumulated. It is understandable since most of them do not pay the taxes they should be paying. People make guesses about their financial worth, but if these billionaires were to admit the veracity of these figures they would be hard put to it to explain where it all came from.

Before I proceed further I am tempted to tell you that Malcolm Forbes was a US billionaire and the magazine was just a small item in his varied business interests. You may recall his visit to Pakistan in 1982 when he promoted the release of hot air balloons in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar, and surprised local millionaires by traversing the country on a motorbike from south to north along with four companions similarly mounted. In Lahore I took my daughters early one morning to see him float a balloon shaped as Minar-e-Pakistan. A unique personality, he died a few years ago.

Talking of the ten richest men, since no one can make much money in Pakistan (and India) by fair and legal means, these gold-plated billionaires would at once be collared by the Central Revenue hounds if they admitted the true extent of their wealth and made to account for every penny they had gathered. It is common knowledge that wealth these days is either white or black. It is the ambition of every businessman, industrialist, defence contractor and drug dealer to collect as much black money as he can since it is neither traceable nor taxable.

Nowadays we have a new type in Pakistan. This consists of the people who ostensibly do nothing but possess millions, pay no taxes, and, socially, try to climb to the top in order to be counted among the “nobility.” Such people are always suspected to be making money from drug traffic, but only they know the truth. But we are very broadminded in these matters. We are not bothered where a man’s gold comes from, whether from smuggling or the white slave trade. Actually the disinclination to reveal how much money one has is a national trait in the subcontinent. For all I know it may be a trait common to the whole of the East, though I can’t be sure, never having travelled beyond Karachi. And there are good reasons for maintaining secrecy in the matter. We are essentially a society of joint families, howsoever our families may have become westernised or dispersed. We feel responsible for our relatives, even distant relations, and if we are not able to help them on their distress we feel guilty. Being Muslim also has something to do with this feeling.

The reality is also there that the moment it becomes known that we have struck gold, we are likely to be besieged by a host of nephews and brothers-in-law and friends who, it seems, had been waiting in the slips to make a catch. That is why we may be rolling in what it takes but we never admit it.

You can check this secrecy business. Ask anyone whom you trust and who trusts you. It may be a bosom friend or business partner or an office colleague, or your own brother. Ask him how much he is worth and he’ll be evasive or tell a white lie but never the truth. In fact, more often than not, he will start complaining about his lack of means and even his downright poverty. “It is sufficient, thank God, that we have two meals a day,” is the most you will get out of him.

Generally people in the West are not secretive about their financial position. Maybe because they know that no indigent friend or greedy relation is going to ask them for a loan or a gift as a matter of social right. On the other hand in our part of the world if my brother happens to have a lakh rupees I assume it as a matter of course that I am entitled to half of it.

Come to think of it, we are inclined to be close and secretive about most family matters. If we have suffered a financial reverse we’ll never take friends and relatives into confidence. If there has been a serious illness in the family like cancer or a heart attack the fact will be kept from outsiders. If there is talk about a match for our daughter it must be kept hush hush. And if the match is broken then of course it assumes the proportions of a defence secret. Strained relations between our daughter and her husband, which may lead to divorce, can only be talked about over our dead bodies. If there is lunacy in the family it is treated duly like a skeleton in the cupboard. Some people go so far as to hide the pregnancy of a newly married daughter as if a mere whisper about it will cause a miscarriage.

I have never been able to understand why we are obsessed by secrecy in personal and family information. At the same time we can never keep a secret. Whether this secret pertains to the state or to individuals — our friends, our relations, our enemies — it is impossible for it to remain confined to the circle from where it is not supposed to leak out.

Our government leaders and ruling regimes derive full advantage from this national propensity. While their own secrets also become known to all and sundry they succeed in ferreting the innermost and closely guarded decisions of the opposition parties through the ever-obliging “mole” placed within every political party. This insider is ready to betray his friends either for money or just to please the powers-that-be. Apparently mutual trustworthiness is not our strong point.

Non-proliferation dilemma

THE non-proliferation treaty review conference being held in New York since May 2 is the biggest hoax in the history of nuclear disarmament negotiations. There is a lot of sound and fury that is being generated at the moot. But it seems strange that the thrust of the nuclear club’s attack is against the supposedly aberrant states in the Third World.

At the same time, a blind eye is turned to the inherent inequity envisaged in the treaty that was concluded in 1968 and came into force in 1970. What is more, the haves of the nuclear world appear to be acquiring greater privileges and power while the have-nots are being pushed further against the wall. This inequality in their relationship has been growing with the passage of time causing greater discontent globally.

The fundamental flaw inherent in the treaty is that it divides the world between the nuclear powers (those who had exploded a nuclear device before Jan 1, 1967) and the non-nuclear states. Thus, it does not give recognition to a situation, which in fact exists today, where states have acquired nuclear weapons after the cut-off date. There is the case of India, Pakistan and Israel which never signed the NPT and now possess nuclear weapons.

North Korea was a signatory but withdrew from it in 2003 in accordance with Article X which allows a state to pull out in exercise of its sovereignty. Pyongyang subsequently announced that it had manufactured nuclear weapons. According to the terms of the treaty the have-nots are required to remain have-nots in perpetuity and the nuclear powers are obliged not to transfer nuclear weapon technology to those outside the nuclear club.

How this anomaly is to be resolved is not quite clear, especially when this inequity is written into the treaty and has been perpetuated regularly at the review conferences held every five years. In 1995, it was decided that the treaty would continue in force indefinitely (as the treaty required the parties to decide after 25 years).

At the same time the second pillar of the NPT that imposed the obligation on all states, especially the nuclear weapon states, to negotiate a general nuclear disarmament treaty, was blatantly not addressed. Even now, there are no signs that the nuclear powers will surrender their weapons in a hurry while they press the others to institute a stringent non-proliferation regime globally. In fact, the United States, the world’s only superpower today, has regressed on its earlier nuclear disarmament commitments.

In 1999, the American Senate refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and President Bush subsequently made it clear that he would not try to persuade the upper house to change its stance. He went further to renounce the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and a verifiable fissile material cutoff treaty.

The 2002 agreement that Washington has concluded with Moscow and which provides for deep cuts in their deployed nuclear stockpiles does not require the two powers to dismantle their weapons, which will only be mothballed. Moreover, the Bush administration has announced that it will be working on a new generation of nuclear weapons.

All this makes grim news for the world community. The Americans have also made it clear that they plan focusing on another “leg” of the NPT, which according to them, has created havoc in the non-proliferation regime. This is Article IV which unequivocally recognizes the “inalienable right” of all parties to “develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes”.

It is this right which Iran has been exercising and for which it has come under attack from Washington on the suspicion that the enriched uranium Tehran has produced will be used for the manufacture of weapons. Although the nuclear programmes of countries which have them are under the International Atomic Energy Agency’s safeguard, efforts are now being made to tighten these safeguards.

Pakistan has not signed the NPT on the grounds that its security has been threatened by India all these years and since India is not a signatory, there was no question of Islamabad signing the treaty either. With the strategic/political situation in the region changing radically and given the anomalies in the NPT pointed out above, it is time the Musharraf government did some hard thinking on the issue. Why the situation is grimmer than is generally realized is because of the reports which have been emanating from Washington over the last few years.

Last week, a Harvard University study group warned of the possibility of Al Qaeda attempting to steal nuclear weapons in Pakistan, “The US and Russia will become vulnerable to nuclear terrorism if they don’t focus on securing weapons of mass destruction,” writes Mathew Bunn, the author of the report Managing the Atom Project.

Other reports are more serious in their implications. They indicate that America’s concern is not just that the extremist groups will steal nuclear weapons. Another major concern that has come to the fore in the US Senate testimonies is “if Musharraf were assassinated or otherwise replaced, Pakistan’s new leader would be less pro-US.

We are concerned that extremist Islamic politicians would gain greater influence”. The Bush administration has assured its opponents in Congress that it has taken security measures against such possibilities. Under normal circumstances, one would have believed them to be safety devices the US has negotiated with India and Pakistan in case of an emergency like a fire or the breakdown of an aging plant.

But these are not normal times. It is being said that the US has had devices installed in Pakistan’s nuclear programme called permissive action links (PALs) to disable nuclear warheads if they fall into the wrong hands. One report by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker also spoke of a US-Israeli plan to take control of Pakistan’s nuclear facilities in case of an Islamist coup, which the Bush administration denied, calling Hersh a “liar”.

Coming back to the NPT review conference in New York, the moot question is what approach should the Third World governments adopt? Given America’s bellicose mood any government with a nuclear programme — even one for peaceful use of nuclear energy — could come under attack as Iraq did on grounds of unfounded suspicion.

In this case, will nuclear weapons really protect the country as is claimed by the champions of nuclear arms? Way back in 1975, Dr Henry Kissinger had threatened Prime Minister Z.A. Bhutto with dire consequences if plans for the nuclear reprocessing plant was not abandoned. Ziaul Haq could clandestinely continue the nuclear plan because he extended full support to the Americans in their war in Afghanistan. President Musharraf has Washington’s support at the moment because he has extended cooperation to the US in its war on terror.

Pakistan finds itself in a dilemma that has no simple answers. All non-nuclear weapon states at the NPT review conference should at least join hands and put pressure on the nuclear weapon states to move concurrently on three fronts — namely, nuclear disarmament, non-transfer of nuclear technology and stringent regulation of peaceful nuclear energy programmes.

But how should countries such as India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea, which are not participating in the NPT conference, react? What should be their role? One thing is certain that if the nuclear weapon states were to actually embark on an arms cut programme, they would be on a moral high ground to persuade others to voluntarily follow suit.

Tony Blair’s days numbered?

HERE’S a statistic it’s worth getting to grips with. After last Thursday’s British general election, the elected chamber in the Mother of Parliaments houses a ruling party — with a comfortable, albeit greatly diminished, majority — that succeeded in attracting the support of 22 per cent of eligible voters. Yes, that’s right: the Labour Party’s 66-seat advantage in the House of Commons is based on little more than one-fifth of the possible vote.

Even George W. Bush could lay claim to the approval last November of a larger proportion of all eligible voters — and the US is notorious for low turnouts.

In Britain last week, the turnout was 61 per cent: a slight improvement on the 2001 figure, but nonetheless low by British standards. But Labour’s share doesn’t seem particularly respectable even viewed as a proportion of the actual vote: at 35.2 per cent, it translates into a smaller figure than the number of people who could not be bothered to vote at all.

No winning party has managed such an abysmal total since the 1920s. In the more recent past, Labour has on occasion lost despite gaining a bigger share. And here’s another interesting statistic. The Conservative Party won 32.3 per cent of the popular vote, only three per cent less than Labour, yet ended up with 159 fewer seats in the Commons: 197 to Labour’s 356.

It doesn’t take complex feats of calculation to figure out that there is something seriously wrong with Britain’s electoral system. The country clearly does not qualify as a great showcase for democracy.

This sort of judgment invariably prompts barbed ripostes of the following variety: Granted, the statistics might not look so good, but surely even a flawed democracy is better than situations where all the political and economic decisions are made by a clutch of generals or an elitist clique of some other variety.

The obvious answer to that is: Yes, it goes almost without saying that democracy of some sort is preferable to dictatorships or oligarchies based on minimal or no popular support. But that is hardly the point, and it certainly does not add up to a sufficient reason for defending the status quo.

Most European countries with a history of democracy employ electoral systems that mix proportional representation (PR) with constituency-based electorates. These systems frequently yield smaller majorities or hung parliaments, necessitating coalitions. But all of them are decidedly more representative than the British system, which continues to rely exclusively on first-past-the-post, constituency-based contests, which often allow candidates to win with remarkably small percentages of the vote.

For instance, in a constituency with, let’s say, 10 candidates, it is statistically possible for the winning candidate to garner no more than 11 per cent of the vote. This means 89 per cent of voters go unrepresented.

That is an extreme example, of course: winning candidates usually do better than that. But it is very rare indeed for a candidate to win 50 per cent or more of the vote. Which means that in most constituencies more than half the electorate is effectively disenfranchised: its votes simply don’t count.

By the same token, in a three-way contest, it is statistically possible for a party to win every seat in parliament with 34 per cent of the vote. That may be an extremely unlikely outcome, but were it to occur, its legitimacy would be unchallengeable (except by extra-parliamentary means).

What should, in the meanwhile, be considered bad enough is that fact that 78 per cent of eligible British voters withheld their imprimatur from Tony Blair’s third term in office. There have over the past week been a series of calls for electoral reform — but no one’s betting on it for the time being, given that the chief beneficiary of the distortions enjoys a 67-seat majority in the new parliament.

The system has also been kind to the Tories over the centuries, but now that their claim to being the “natural party of government” seems like a distant memory, they may be less inclined to resist change. The Liberal Democrats have long advocated PR, not least because the existing modus operandi clearly discriminates against smaller parties. However, their chief hope of a meaningful push for reform lies in a hung parliament.

Were the present parliament elected by PR, it would have been hung. And the likelihood of instability is one of the chief arguments against PR, another being that it would do away with the tradition whereby local members of parliament can be approached by the public and asked to tackle problems that concern their constituencies. If the people voted directly for parties rather than candidates and parliamentary representation was reserved for individuals picked by the party leadership rather than those chosen by constituency branches, the personal touch would go out of politics.

This is a legitimate concern, but it does not quite add up to an adequate argument against greater democratization. Besides, any system of improved representation that Britain might adopt certainly need not rely exclusively on party lists. A mixture of those and constituency-based representation is one possible alternative. Something along the lines of the Australian model is another possibility — perhaps as an interim measure between the unsatisfactory present and a widely acceptable form of PR.

Australia has constituency-based contests rather than PR, but voters do not pick just one party: they write numbers against the names on the ballot paper — 1 for first preference, 2 for second preference, and so on. This enables members of the public to vote for the party of their choice, even if it stands no chance of winning, without fearing that their vote will go waste and may thereby contribute to the victory of the party they consider least desirable.

In the British context, for instance, Labour sought to prevent disgruntled supporters from voting for the Liberal Democrats by arguing that this would only help the Tories. This was true in some constituencies and not in others. But under an Australian-style preferential system (which, although far from perfect, would be decidedly an improvement on the status quo), such an argument would have made no sense. It would have been possible for anyone to vote for the Liberal Democrats without any risk of contributing to a Conservative triumph by default, as long as they accorded Labour a higher preference than the Tories on their ballot paper.

Any overhaul of the Westminster system ought to include provisions for a second elected chamber as a replacement for the profoundly anachronistic House of Lords. Unfortunately, it appears unlikely that momentum for a change will build up in the short run, not least because British politics will be preoccupied for some time with internal tussles in the two main parties.

Even the Liberal Democrats, who now enjoy a more sizable parliamentary presence than at any time since the 1920s, are not immune to this phenomenon, what with some members complaining that in its eagerness to outflank Labour, the party has drifted too far to the left. That is a bit of an exaggeration, of course; in fact it’s Labour that has slid to the right over the past decade, leaving the Lib Dems to straddle the centre. Their anti-war stance, although less than vociferous, meant they were well-positioned to attract disaffected Labour voters — a five per cent swing.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, relied on an Australian import: not preferential voting, but a ruthless strategist by the name of Lynton Crosby, notorious Down Under for boosting John Howard’s fortunes with subliminal racist propaganda. He tried to do as much for Michael Howard, but enjoyed less spectacular success. The Tories gained 35 seats, but their showing was nonetheless considered abysmal — a worse result than what Labour managed at the supposed peak of its unpopularity in 1983. Michael Howard, therefore, deemed it prudent to resign, and the Conservative leadership is now up for grabs for the fifth time in eight years.

Predictably, Blair is also under pressure to step aside. Downing Street has suggested that the prime minister wishes to stay put until 2008, making way for Gordon Brown roughly a year ahead of the next election. But a growing number of backbench MPs are beginning to publicly demand a transition much sooner than that, preferably before local elections scheduled for May 2006, but definitely by next year’s autumn party conference. On Monday, The Independent reported that even members of Blair’s cabinet, despite public statements of support for the embattled PM, intend to ask him to clear out within 18 months.

This may seem like an unreasonable way to treat a man who has led Labour to an unprecedented third successive electoral victory. The statistics show that it’s a deceptive triumph — but it’s a triumph nonetheless. However, to many Labour MPs — not to mention all the candidates who lost — Blair now looks like a liability. There are valid grounds for the perception that Labour would have lost far fewer votes but for Blair’s determination to join the war against Iraq, and all the lies he told or orchestrated in trying to justify that monumental mistake.

The relentlessly anti-war George Galloway — who, after being expelled from the Labour Party, defeated a pro-war Labour candidate in London on behalf of the Respect coalition — has threatened to hound Blair out of parliament. That may not be necessary if Labour MPs have their way. The problem for Blair is that wouldn’t dare duck out without permission from a higher authority: George W. Bush.

Come what may, an interesting parliamentary term lies ahead for Britain.

Email: mahirali1@gmail.com