"The justification which Tony Blair gave for backing George Bush was wrong," said Gill, left

LONDON, July 16 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The toll of the Iraq invasion again hit British Prime Minister Tony Blair Friday, July 16, when his party suffered a stinging by-election defeat by an anti-war party and narrowly avoided losing another once-safe parliamentary seat.

The left-of-center Liberal Democrat, a minority party, overturned a Labor majority of more than 13,000 in the central city of Leicester to win the seat by more than 1,600 votes.

In the city of Birmingham , Labor hung on to the Hodge Hill seat by 460 votes from the Liberal Democrats, its 2001 majority of 12,000, however, was all but wiped out.

It was the latest in a string of poor results for Blair since the Iraq invasion which started with a parliamentary election in London last September and carried through local and European election results last month, according to Reuters.

" Iraq has become totemic for underpinning an awful lot of other issues where people now no longer trust this government," said Charles Kennedy, leader of the Liberal Democrats.

" Iraq is to this government what sleaze was to the Conservative government," Kennedy said, calling his party's success "a hugely significant victory."

The Conservatives - a shadow of the mighty electoral machine commanded by former leader Margaret Thatcher - came third in both polls.

The twin polls - sparked by the death of one MP and the departure of another for a top job in Europe - had been billed as a plebiscite on Blair's rule and his support for last year's US-led invasion in Iraq .

The poll results followed a report on Iraq this week that damned the flawed intelligence that Blair used - and some voters believe abused - to justify an unpopular invasion of Iraq .

"The justification which Tony Blair gave for backing George Bush was wrong," the Liberal Democrats' Parmjit Singh Gill said in his victory speech in Leicester .

Wrong Support

"Iraq has become totemic for underpinning an awful lot of other issues where people now no longer trust this government," said Kennedy

Both constituencies have large Muslim populations, making them prime candidates for an anti-invasion backlash.

"The message is loud and clear to the Labour party – Muslim support which they have counted on and taken for granted for decades is no longer there, and they must change their policies if they are to stand any chance of regaining it," Anas Al-Tikriti, MAB spokesperson, said in a statement sent to IslamOnline.net.

Leicester South contains a large concentration of Muslim voters, and local groups such as the Friends of Al-Aqsa have been campaigning for Muslims to get out in numbers.

"That Muslim votes went to the Liberal Democrats rather than the Conservatives is not surprising given their cheerleader role on the Iraq war, their unflinching support for Israeli brutality against the Palestinians, and their abhorrent position against the eminent scholar Shaikh Qaradawi’s visit to the UK last week," Tikriti said.

Blair's public trust ratings have plunged since he took Britain to the invasion of Iraq last year and Wednesday's report into intelligence failings on Iraq gave his critics fresh ammunition, according to Reuters.

Butler absolved Blair of distorting intelligence but contradicted his claim that weapons of mass destruction were ready for use. He also questioned how intelligence was used, leading to accusations the government plays by its own rules.

The losses make barely a dent in Blair's 161-seat House of Commons majority and he remains on track for victory nationally.

But the unpopularity of Blair had reflected in earlier voting, with Labour losing another formerly rock-solid seat to the Liberal Democrats in a by-election last year and taking a terrible beating in local and European elections last month.

The new reverses will ratchet up recent speculation that Blair's respected Finance Minister Gordon Brown could be considering an internal coup to oust the Prime Minister.

There was, however, some good news for Blair.

While Labour did poorly, the main opposition Conservative party - most likely to challenge Blair in a general election expected next year - slumped to a miserable third place in both by-elections.

Political analysts noted that although Blair could take comfort from the poor Conservative performance, and might well win another general election due to the lack of a credible alternative, he faced major problems.

Recent polls had shown a "rather consistent pattern" of plummeting Labour support, said John Curtice, professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow .

"The message must now be that you are pretty unpopular," he told the BBC.

On April 17, over 1,000 protestors converged outside Downing Street demanding Blair to withdraw troops from Iraq and withhold support for American recognition of Israel ’s occupation of Palestinian territories.

The Legal Action Against War, a British anti-war group, said in March it wanted the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to consider whether Blair and his government officials should be tried for war crimes over the Iraq occupation.

The prime minister came under unprecedented criticism from the most senior former officials in the Foreign Office for toeing the U.S. line in the Middle East and occupied Iraq in April.