"He walked on water, it was like he could do no wrong," said Ben Page, director of the Ipsos MORI polling firm. Now his approval ratings have fallen to just over 30 percent.
No, it's not George Bush — it's Tony Blair.
It is Blair's passionate — some say disastrously stubborn — leadership on Iraq that is the one issue that continues to weigh him down. There is a widespread perception that the prime minister exaggerated, or even fabricated, the dangers of weapons of mass destruction in taking the country to a war that has no end in sight.
I think Blair is a pretty unpleasant character for that very reason. Also for the law against criticizing another's religion that he tried to push through; his support for a new, Orwellian kind of restraining order; his equally worrisome enthusiasm for the totalitarian Civil Contingies Act, a new law that gives the government the power to declare a state of emergency for as long as it wants, with no checks and balances to speak of; and on and on.
The man is a certified menace to society — a liberty-destroying yo-yo — and the speculation is that we might have seen the last of him soon, thank heavens.
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