British prime minister faces critical audience at home

LONDON -- In the past week, Prime Minister Tony Blair has helped ease tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan and paid a risky midnight visit to the new leaders of Afghanistan.

That was the easy part.

As he returned home Tuesday, Blair was accused of taking to the world stage while ignoring crippling domestic problems, including a failing railway network and an overstretched health care system.

"Britain is a country with a long tradition of international involvement -- but there are also pressing issues within the U.K. that require the same level of commitment," said Tony Travers, director of the Greater London group at the London School of Economics.

Blair made improving Britain's public services -- especially the reviled railways and the once-proud National Health Service -- a centerpiece of his re-election campaign last spring.

After the terror attacks on New York and Washington, Blair became an energetic advocate of the international war on terrorism, working closely with President Bush and traversing the Middle East to drum up support for the campaign in Afghanistan.

Even Blair's political allies sounded the alarm.

Jackie Ashley, political editor of the pro-Labor New Statesman magazine, said the public was growing annoyed with Blair.

"The problem is that if he thinks his place in history will be made overseas, he is wrong," she wrote in the Observer newspaper. "History will be made at home."