BLAIR DODGES BULLETS

The May re-election of Tony Blair with a comfortable majority in the U.K. parliament solves one foreign policy problem for him, but opens up another.

Although Blair's Labour Party tried to avoid discussion of the Iraq war, the issue was forced to the center of the campaign by an opposing third

party: the Liberal Democrats. They chose to run on a platform to the left of Labour, with an anti-war emphasis along with a civil liberties push and plans for increased taxes and public spending. To the considerable extent that the Liberal Democrats made the election a referendum on the Iraq war, Blair's actions have been ratified by the electorate.

Polling showed that only 2 percent of British voters had reservations about the Iraq war strong enough to decide their vote. As one influential Labour source told me, the loudest anti-war voices were "big shots: lawyers, media types, former BBC chairman Greg Dyke, etc." Grassroots voters were likelier to take an "all's well that ends well" view. So Tony Blair survived his boldness on Iraq with surprising ease.