July 4 (Bloomberg) -- Christoph Blocher staked his political future on pulling his party, Switzerland's largest, out of the government in December. It was a losing bet.

Blocher now is fending off an internal rebellion and calls by fellow members of his SVP party to retire after a series of political setbacks in June. Just eight months ago, the SVP, which favors strict limits on immigration, scored the highest vote total of any Swiss party since 1919.

``Blocher's era is over,'' SVP lawmaker and Blocher ally Yves Nidegger said in an interview in Geneva. ``The lion is not dead, but the SVP can no longer count only on him to win. The party needs to find a second wind.''

Blocher, who addresses the party's annual meeting tomorrow in Brig, may be going the way of nationalist counterparts Jean- Marie Le Pen in France and Joerg Haider in Austria, who failed to hold their movements together after their biggest successes.

A priest's son who took plastics maker EMS-Chemie Holding AG from near-bankruptcy to 20 straight years of profit, Blocher made the SVP, formerly a farmers' interest group, Switzerland's biggest political force in 10 years. His message: immigration should be limited, ties with the European Union reduced and corporate taxes cut.

Swiss voters responded by awarding the SVP, as the party is known by its German initials, with 28.8 percent of the vote in October's parliamentary elections. That gave it 62 seats in parliament, the largest share.

Ousted

Blocher's troubles started soon after that. Parliament ousted him as justice minister Dec. 12, a post he had held for four years, over what leaders of other parties said was his lack of collegiality. Blocher responded by withdrawing the SVP from the four-party power-sharing arrangement that has governed Switzerland since 1959.

The party, which is still in parliament, then moved to expel Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, who was picked to replace Blocher as justice minister, and Defense Minister Samuel Schmid, who had refused to quit the cabinet.

At the time, the fracas gave Blocher, 67, a boost. The SVP received 14,000 new applications for membership in the 10 days after his departure, increasing party ranks by 15 percent. The party still controls less than one-third of the votes in parliament, though, limiting its impact on policy.

``You can be the biggest political force in the country, but it's still not enough,'' said Pascal Sciarini, a political analyst at the University of Geneva. ``You need an absolute majority to win in parliament or in popular votes.''

Television Show

It may be too soon to write Blocher off, allies and some analysts say.

He is likely to remain a force as the party's main financier, according to SVP Deputy Oskar Freysinger. Blocher airs his views on a weekly Web interview program, http://www.teleblocher.ch, and gets extensive coverage in the Weltwoche, a Swiss-German weekly allied with him and the party.

Recent events, though, have not gone Blocher's way. On June 1, Swiss voters rejected three SVP-backed ballot initiatives in a national referendum, including one restricting the granting of Swiss passports to foreign nationals established in Switzerland for more than 12 years.

On the same day, the party expelled the local SVP chapter in the canton of Graubuenden for its refusal to cancel Widmer- Schlump's membership. On June 21, members of the chapter in Bern, Switzerland's capital, also split in support of Graubuenden. The two groups are planning to build a national party before the end of this year.

`No Chance'

Blocher, who declined to be interviewed, has dismissed such efforts. ``A new party has no chance,'' he told Geneva's Le Temps daily on June 11. ``Those who want to go their own way should keep in mind that they will only experience success over the short term.''

The day that interview was published, party leaders lost a parliament battle when lawmakers rejected Blocher's bid to force separate votes on the renewal of a labor accord with the EU and the pact's extension to Bulgaria and Romania. A single measure increases the chance of passage, which he opposes.

Undeterred, the SVP is supporting a ballot initiative that seeks to ban the construction of minarets, from which muezzins summon Muslims to prayer, across the Alpine nation.

The organizing committee said this week on its Web site that it had successfully gathered the 100,000 signatures needed to force a nationwide vote. It will formally bring the signatures to the Federal Chancellery on Tuesday.

To contact the reporter on this story: Marc Wolfensberger in Bern at mwolfens@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 3, 2008 18:01 EDT