LONDON, 6 January 2005 — As the UK turned the key on the old year, an awful lot was conveniently left behind, locked in the waiting room of history. Scandals and issues that have remained live for so long have suddenly lost their power to embarrass and trouble the British government. The recent affair of a (now former) minister and a fast-tracked visa for his lover’s nanny has already faded from the memory; likewise the elegant criticism of the report into the intelligence on WMD in the lead-up to the war in Iraq. Things have moved on and for Tony Blair, there are conferences on the Middle East and Africa to be convened, an election to be fought and the all-important pre-election budget to put together. The horror of last week’s events in South East Asia, only fractionally lessened by inspiring generosity worldwide, will tend to increase the sense of a before and an after. But forgive me if I’m not quite ready to move on yet. There are things I want us to take into the new year, particularly a picture of a British government which is, at base, interested only in the maintenance of its power.
I am as certain as anyone that Tony Blair will easily be returned to power for a third term. The Conservative opposition will not be able to defeat the double-whammy of failing to defend its birthright policies against Labour’s brilliant campaign of appropriation and actively helping the Blair administration with support over the war in Iraq as well a costly and intrusive identity card system for the British public. Both are profound mistakes that go against what used to be the Conservatives’ core values of minimal state intrusion in the lives of citizens and may prove to be a godsend for the UK’s second largest opposition party, the Liberal-Democrats. As it is, the latter are ten points ahead of where they were prior to the 2001 election.
All this leaves the man who took the UK to war on a trunk load of lies looking remarkably untroubled. During the last four years, he has rendered his own party, the opposition, Parliament and even his Cabinet pretty much impotent. He has sucked the energy out of British politics and placed it at his own disposal. A large majority means he will become more dominant in the life of the nation than any prime minister since Churchill during the war. Not even Margaret Thatcher had quite such unfettered control.
This centralized power exercised by the prime minister and a small, inner circle is inimical to the traditions of collegiate British democracy. It is worrying in itself but also because it creates a template for all future prime ministers. It seems unlikely that future incumbents would seek to give Parliament back some of its power, especially if they are used to working in a tight group, spears and shields pointing up and outwards. That said, with another near-certain three-figure majority, he will be just too big to take down. Blair is as ruthless and honed a politician as Mrs. Thatcher and, as we have seen over the last year, he’s better at watching his rear. He is also less principled than she was. I am not talking about the ethics of his government but, rather, the constant impulse provided by a few core principles. Thatcherism had privatization and deregulation; Blairism has modernization and, well, Tony. Blair the savior of Africa. Blair the welfare reformer. Blair the world statesman. Blair the grim-visaged warrior. Blair the family man. Blair the environmentalist. And so on.
The beauty of his sleek design is that he is so adaptable. He can shift in the center ground, absorbing policies which shore up his power and deprive his opponents of support, without troubling any ideological conscience. There is a sense that Blair and his supporters have only one political conviction and that is their unique entitlement to power. There is also a shallowness, even vacuity, in so much that is proposed, not least the 40 bills planned for a third term. Many of these will simply be enhanced spin or further meddling with what should be left to individual choice, but they are being presented as another great modernizing program.
If these bills were so critical to the UK’s national life, one wonders why they haven’t been introduced to Parliament in the last eight years Blair has occupied 10 Downing Street, the UK premier’s home and office. The suggestion that Labour is creating work for itself cannot be entirely ruled out.
The more serious omission by the Tories has been a failure to oppose vociferously legislation that limits trial by jury, increases police wire-tapping powers, alters rules on arrest and detention, and seeks to limit a comedian’s ability to lampoon religion. The attack on civil liberties and ancient freedoms mounted by Blair has been one of the most alarming developments of his government, but it is not surprising. The dark side of the self-defined modernizer is a man who has no respect for what has gone before and finds tradition baffling. The contempt for Parliament and an independent civil service and the failure to respect individual freedoms and a rights-based democracy are all part of the same unprincipled exercise of power.
If there’s one event that we should take with us from last year, it is the damning judgment against the indefinite detention of foreign terrorist suspects. One the most senior judges in England, Lord Hoffmann, said of the UK’s anti-terror laws: “The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these.” That is a phrase which should be included in all opposition election material because it defines Blair’s stealthy challenge to Britons’ democratic rights. He also said: ‘The executive is much too free to bring in a huge number of extremely bad bills, a huge amount of regulation and to do whatever it likes — and whatever it likes is what will get the best headlines tomorrow. All that is part of bad government in this country.”
I freely concede that these concerns are unlikely to remain at the forefront of British public attention until the election, but I am not alone in thinking that Blair’s third term, both in the quality of his governance and in the authoritarian patterns that have emerged recently, could be disastrous for British democracy.
