Amid Labour pains, Blair delivers again

He had already announced that Thursday’s election would be his last, and the result may speed his transfer of power to his heir apparent, Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the Exchequer.

With final results announced from nearly all of Britain’s 646 voting districts by 5 am, Blair’s majority was projected to have drastically fallen from around 160 in the departing Parliament to around 66.

The Conservatives under Michael Howard rose to around 200 seats, while the smaller Liberal Democrats were projected to secure almost 60.

As results poured in, Howard conceded defeat, saying ‘‘It looks as if Mr. Blair is going to win a third term for Labour.’’ But, he said, the result ‘‘marks a significant step towards our recovery.’’ The Conservatives have now lost a third straight election, but the results early Friday reversed a trend toward ever more disastrous defeats.

The outcome suggested that voters had punished Blair and the Labour Party for his handling of the war in Iraq, defecting to the Liberal Democratic Party and enabling the opposition Conservatives to make gains.

‘‘The war has made an impact,’’ said Robin Cook, a former Labour foreign minister who resigned to protest the invasion of Iraq.

From Labour’s point of view, the victory was depicted as historic, the first time since the party was formed in 1900 that it had secured a third successive term. The same feat, for the Conservative Party, was last recorded by Margaret Thatcher before she stepped down in 1990—toward the end of an era when the Conservatives projected themselves as the party of government for much of the 20th century.

But the Labour victory was bittersweet, coming after a campaign in which Blair had been bruised by criticism over the war, shunned by some followers as untrustworthy and denied a repetition of landslide victories in 1997 and 2001.

Speaking after he was re-elected with a big majority as a legislator for his home district in northeastern England, Blair said that if the early trends were confirmed, ‘‘It seems as if it’s clear that the British people wanted the return of the Labour Party with a reduced majority,’’ and that Labour would have to respond to that sentiment. ‘‘We have to focus on the things that matter to them,’’ he said.

He also acknowledged the damage from the war in Iraq. ‘‘Iraq has been a divisive issue in this country, but I hope now that we can unite again and look to the future,’’ he said.

In a brief but confident and almost passionate address early Friday, Blair told supporters, ‘‘We set out an agenda for change and we are now going to take that forward.’’ He said he wanted to focus on ‘‘the economy, jobs, living standards, our National Health Service, our schools, to give our young people the chance they need, law and order.’’

‘‘To be elected for a third term is very special. It’s a tremendous privilege, an honour, and we should use it for the benefit of our country,’’ he said.

—(New York Times News Service)