BUFFETED by rows over Libya and Afghanistan, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown appears powerless to seize the initiative and turn around his fortunes before a national election due within nine months. Brown has just returned from his summer holiday for a crucial new political year, but has been blown off course by an outcry over the Scottish government's decision to release a Libyan agent convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing. The release of Abdel Basset Al-Megrahi angered Washington and many relatives of victims of the attack that killed 270 people, most of them Americans. A surge in deaths of British troops in Afghanistan has put the spotlight on whether Brown has given the forces enough money for helicopters and life-protecting vehicles. While the news is slightly better on the economic front, Britain is still mired in recession while European rivals France and Germany have returned to growth. Brown has been left constantly reacting to newspaper headlines and has presented few new initiatives that could turn around what appears to be an inevitable slide to defeat at the election, due by next June. Opinion polls consistently give the opposition Conservatives a double-digit lead over Brown's Labour Party, in power since 1997, enough to give them a parliamentary majority. “Unfortunately for Gordon Brown, the story seems to be set ... Everything is seen in terms of the expected Labour defeat and the probable Conservative landslide,” said Steven Fielding, director of Nottingham University's Centre for British Politics. “It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy...,” he told Reuters. Megrahi's release triggered accusations that Britain had put pressure on the Scottish government to free him to help British companies win trade deals with oil producer Libya. While refusing to publicly state his position on the release of the Libyan, Brown has denied any cover-up or double-dealing. But the Conservatives have had a field day. “Britain has been damaged in the last few weeks by the whole Al-Megrahi affair. I think some of our allies have been offended, many of our friends have been puzzled and ironically it hasn't even helped relations with Libya,” Conservative foreign policy spokesman William Hague told the BBC Monday. Conservatives accused Brown of a U-turn for saying he would support compensation claims against Libya by families of Irish Republican Army victims who say Tripoli helped to arm the guerrillas. The deaths of around 40 British soldiers in Afghanistan in the last two months have led to accusations that Brown's government has failed to equip its 9,000 troops there properly and led to questioning of the British deployment. Brown, who says the mission is vital to stop terror attacks in Britain, flew to Afghanistan to see the troops and made a major speech last Friday to defend his policy. But, on the eve of the speech, parliamentary defense aide Eric Joyce quit in protest at Brown's policy on Afghanistan. “(Brown's) problem is that if he tries to switch the public's attention away from Libya and Afghanistan to domestic policy then he finds the government is hoist on its own petard by the problems of the economy (and) the public services,” said Simon Lee, senior politics lecturer at Hull University. The sense of drift has led to renewed rumblings of dissent within the Labour Party, three months after Brown survived the worst crisis of his premiership when six senior ministers quit, with some openly criticizing his leadership style. Jon Cruddas, a prominent figure on the Labour left, will accuse the party Tuesday of being paralyzed by defeatism and of failing to attack the Conservatives, according to reports. Any dissent could come to the fore at the Labour Party's annual conference at the end of September. But analysts think a serious challenge to Brown's leadership before the election is now unlikely. Foreign policy issues have for now dislodged what is likely to be the main election issue — what the parties will do to rein in a ballooning public deficit. Labour has said it will protect public services while accusing the Conservatives of planning drastic cuts, but there are signs Labour plans to change tack, acknowledging a need for budget restraint in a framework of public service reform. Brown may take some heart from an opinion poll in the Daily Telegraph newspaper Monday which showed the Conservatives' lead falling by two points to 13 points. The poll found many voters were unconvinced by Conservative leader David Cameron. That is a weakness Labour could seek to exploit with a negative election campaign focusing on the Conservative leadership's relative inexperience.
