Liberals love to spin. The one thing they accuse the Bush administration of doing is the one thing they do better than anyone else.

Evan Coyne Maloney, one of my favorite bloggers of all time, makes a great point. In this case, the reporting is the story.

As of this writing, the election results show that the Conservatives have gained 33 seats in Parliament, while the Labor Party lost a total of 47 seats. In other words, over 70% of the seats lost by Labour were picked up by the other major party that supported the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. This hardly seems like a stunning victory for the anti-war side.

Yet the media is playing this issue as if Iraq lost Blair the seats in Parliament. Yet even a cursory glance over the results show that most of the pickups were people who supported the war anyway.

So why the spin?

I work for an English-owned company. The truth of the matter is, it’s the economic issues (this was the discussion yesterday) that hurt Blair. As Evan also points out, it’s best for Labour to just chalk it up to Iraq and forget about it for PR purposes; although they do so at their own peril when people start barking about the economy.

Source: Brain Terminal