The Prime Minister on Whom the Sun has Set

Here's a take on Smiling Tony by Scott Cresswell, who's currently doing a polsci Ph.D thesis on the EU policy of the Conservative Party.

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Few British Prime Ministers since the Great Reform Act of 1832 have dominated British politics as has Tony Blair. Blair's parliamentary majorities have been unsurpassed (in normal circumstances at least) and his personal popularity has never quite gone through the troughs that dogged that other twentieth century Titan, Margaret Thatcher. There is a quite viable argument that Blair is the most successful British prime minister of the century, predicated on the size of his majorities and the lack of rancour he has inspired. And yet, Blair's premiership is over.

Blair is, to use words that haunted the Major premiership, 'in office, but not in power'. Reports in British newspapers have him definitely gone by Christmas; autumn (spring in Australia) looks more likely. Every piece of speculation brings the date closer. The Guardian, the staunchest of Labour newspapers, has bid him gone now. He will not go of his own accord, pushed out by his Chancellor, Gordon Brown, a dour Scotsman. Indeed, since the last election (2005) Blair and Brown have been in a sort of transitional phase, the two old rivals (dating from the 1994 leadership election) in an uneasy embrace termed the 'dual premiership'. Admitting the mistake of announcing his retirement prematurely (and yet annoying a twice jilted Brown by not naming a date), even his vaunted political judgment looks to have left him. The final years of his premiership, mirroring Thatcher's in many respects, have been a failure at best, at worst a farce. The mistakes of Iraq, the suicide of weapons scientist David Kelly, and the infamous weapons dossier do not bear re-telling. They have diminished him, his standing in the country, in the party, and, I think, the most important of all, history. His errors have emboldened the Labour left, once cowed into submission, into the rediscovery of its voice and its power. Editor of the Spectator Matthew d'Ancona writes in the Telegraph, "It is not simply factional warfare - bitter as that undoubtedly is - but full-scale fragmentation. Labour's National Executive Committee and parliamentary party are flexing their muscles recklessly. Last week's industrial action by council workers showed how emboldened the unions have been by the Government's travails."

This is crucial, as the whole 'New Labour' project was the transformation of Labour from an unelectable socialist rabble (its 1983 election manifesto, a grab-bag of socialist measure, was called by a Labour MP "the longest suicide note in history" and so it proved) into a modern, professional, ruthless, and centrist party. Power was shifted from the party and its institutions to the leadership.

This point bears expanding for those unfamiliar with British politics. On election day 1992, with the polls putting Labour by up to 10 points in front, the Murdoch owned Sun newspaper printed a front page, headlined "If Kinnock wins, will the last person to leave Britain turn out the lights?" Labour lost. Not because of the Sun ("It was the Sun wot won it" arrogantly appeared on the front page the following day), but because Labour was still struggling to throw off the vestiges of Tony Benn, the Militant Tendency, and every other loony left-wing organisation that had infiltrated it since Thatcher's win in 1979. Blair exorcised all of those ghosts and made Labour electable once more. It is worth noting that in 1997, 2001, and 2005, the Sun backed Labour, not the Conservatives. (Well, allegedly, anyway. I don't know if any Sun readers bother reading past page 3.)

(There's an old joke, with variants for each country. "People who read The Times think they run the country, people who read The Financial Times own the country, people who read the Mirror don't care who runs the country, people who read the Daily Telegraph [me!] think that the country should be run by another country [America], and people who read The Guardian think that it is." It is at this point in a 'Yes, Minister' episode where Hacker enquires about the Sun readers, to which Bernard replies, "they don't care, just so long as she has big tits!" Touché.)

This newly found confidence on the left has dismayed Blair and loyal Blairites. They are, in all honesty, less comfortable with the old Labour tradition, seemingly personified by the tax-and-spend Brown, than even with Thatcherism. With his departure announced and the left poised for control, Blair has spent much time trying to shore up his legacy. The civil (public) service, the health system, and the education system have all come in for Blair's newly found zeal for addressing the stuff-ups he's spent the last ten years ignoring. Why? Because Tony Blair, the great social democrat, has discovered 'the market'. 'Market-orientated reform' has become the Blairite buzzword of the moment.

It is personified in the attempt to reform the education system. A White Paper was compiled, under the auspices of the Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly, a Blair loyalist. But Blair, too weak to withstand a Labour left openly flouting his leadership and for whom the measure was too radical, was forced to neuter the bill. (It was reported in last week's Spectator that rebels are confident enough even to plot in front of party whips!) Yet not even that was enough for the rebels, who voted against the bill in droves. It passed, but only with Conservative votes. Blair being forced to rely on the Conservative leader, David Cameron, a Blair in the making (and seen as Blair's true heir by some Blairites and even the man himself reportedly), to shore up his legacy is indeed rich in symbolism. With Parliament due for summer recess and the scandal of the loans for peerages affair taking whatever lustre was left, Blair will go unfulfilled. And unloved. It is one of the ironies of British politics that when Thatcher left, she organized for the succession of John Major, thinking he would be a proper heir. He was not. She had to wait for Tony Blair, who was/is closer to Thatcher than either Major was or Cameron is. (Thatcher reportedly is very fond of Blair and he has reciprocated publicly.) Blair may get his serve of irony as he waits to see whether Cameron will be his heir.

Summing up Blair's legacy is not for me, I lack the in-depth familiarity with the period to nail my trousers to any masts. But one point is, I think, illustrative, sticking with the Thatcher – Blair theme. When leaving London I was given a going away present by the hippie playwright mother of a friend of mine, a kilt of MacDonald tartan, in recognition for my numerous (and good natured, of course) jokes about Scotland and her Scottish-ness. In return, I left her a copy of Thatcher's Downing Street Years (she positively despises Tories, I am merely tolerated). Apparently, it's going to get thrown at me next time I'm in the general vicinity. Whether for better or worse, I can't see anyone throwing Blair's memoirs about (except Gordon Brown…)