LONDON — As British voters mark their ballots today--and they do mark them, with a pencil--Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labor Party appears headed for a conditional landslide.
Polls show Blair holding a commanding lead over the enfeebled Conservative Party, virtually guaranteeing him a second term. However, an expected low voter turnout would underscore public disappointment with the pace of change in his first term.
There is so little suspense about the outcome of the election that the Conservatives were reduced in recent days to warning voters against giving Labor too great a victory.
Yet the four-week campaign also provided Blair with pointed reminders that Britons are demanding better basic public services, especially from schools and the National Health Service. From the partner of a cancer patient early in the campaign to the son of a nurse this week, Blair was upbraided by voters complaining about inadequate funding, long waiting lists for operations and shortages of teachers and nurses.
In the media, as within the Labor Party, the sense is that voters will give Blair another term in which to make progress but will be much less forgiving if things do not improve more quickly.
"Labor will get in again," Chris Wigley, the manager of a bingo parlor in the northeastern town of South Shields, said during the campaign. "But this is the term they will be judged by. Up until now, they could talk about . . . what the Tories left them. Now it's their own stuff."
More pointedly, for a country that often thinks itself more advanced than its European neighbors, wrote the Independent newspaper, "we are impatient for the rail services of France, the education standards of Germany, the quality of health care in the Netherlands."
One survey published Wednesday in the Guardian newspaper showed a 4-percentage-point drop in support for the prime minister. It still gave him an 11-point lead over the Conservatives--more than enough to ensure victory--but it clearly fed Blair's concern about the depth of his supporters' commitment.
In recent days, he implored supporters to go to the polls.
"Please, come out and let your voice be heard. Use your vote. People fought and died to get the vote in this country," Blair said. "That vote is the voice of the people speaking. So speak out, I say, loud and clear. . . . Reject a return to the Conservatives, reject a return to boom and bust and cuts in services, and let us move forward."
