Who is Tony Blair? To the editorialists of the London Times and the Economist magazine, he is the thinking Conservative’s prime minister of choice: The person best placed to preserve the Thatcherite legacy by giving it a human face. To his critics on the left, Blair is a market fundamentalist with a coherent, if only partially declared, agenda to privatize as much of our lives as possible: A neoliberal cuckoo in the social democratic nest. The Blairite counterargument states the opposite. He is the ultimate Fabian gradualist, busily transforming Britain in a thousand ways so subtle as to be invisible to the human eye.
There is evidence to support each of these propositions, but none provides a satisfactory and consistent template for explaining Blair’s actions. Someone wishing to privatize public services would have run them down through sustained underfunding, as the Conservatives did, instead of investing billions more in health and education. Conversely, no one seriously concerned with equality would have kept such a low top rate of income tax (40 percent for incomes over GBP 32,400) or introduced a policy as socially regressive as top-up fees for higher education.
To judge Blair against traditional ideological benchmarks is an impossible task, and not simply because he cultivates ambiguity in order to sustain broad electoral appeal. The confusion arises because he is driven not, as many suppose, by the desire to realize any specific political vision, but by his own peculiar calculus of power. By this I don’t mean the power of office so much as the power of those he fears might deny it to him.
Blair’s experience of opposition led him to conclude that Labour could only govern by making a binding accommodation with power. But what others saw as a necessary expedient of opposition, Blair has transformed into a permanent logic of government. Dismissed at the outset was the idea that government could be used to change power relations in any significant way.
Power, and the need to accommodate it, is therefore the unifying principle of Blairism. It explains why the government has cozied up to big business (strong) and marginalized the trade unions (weak). It explains Blair’s determination to keep Rupert Murdoch onside, even when it means watering down media ownership rules or backsliding on Europe. It explains both the good and the bad in his approach to public services.
Most of all, it explains Iraq. There is no power quite like a superpower, and Blair’s decision to go to war reflected a fear that any deviation from the American position would provoke the vengeful wrath of trans-Atlantic conservatism. He was not emboldened to defy public opinion by the courage of his convictions, but by the calculation that, whatever the risks, it would ultimately prove to be the line of least resistance.
The political consequences of this defensive mindset are profound. Just as surely as you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, you can’t build a fairer society without challenging wealth and power. That is something Blair is psychologically incapable of. In the battle against what George Orwell once colorfully described as “the lords of property and their hired liars and bumsuckers”, Blair will always be with the liars and bumsuckers — not because he agrees with them, but because he is mesmerized by their power.
So the short answer to the question “who is Tony Blair?” is that he is a weak man who bends to power. The mystery is why so few on the left have realized this. London Mayor Ken Livingstone is one. Faced with a rigged selection that denied him the Labour candidacy for mayor of London, he cheerfully stepped outside the tent, drubbed Blair at the polls and negotiated his readmission from a position of strength. The trade unions appear to have cottoned on, too. A few sharp tugs of the purse strings were enough to secure the “Warwick agreement” to include a clutch of new employment rights in Labour’s election manifesto.
How widely this realization is shared will have a significant impact on the election. Behind the panic signals emanating from Labour is the assumption that voters who threaten to rebel are, in the words of one anonymous minister, “bluffing it”. As a buttress to this complacency, Labour’s critical friends in the British press pen dire warnings of a protest vote. The recent analogy drawn between disillusioned Labour supporters and stray dogs waiting to be called home by their master’s whistle captures the relationship rather well (Fetch! Beg! Roll over! Good girl!!!). This lapdog left barks occasionally, but will always come to heel.
For those who aspire to more than the occasional Bonio, the choice is harder. None of them is frivolous in assessing what a Conservative victory would mean, or doubts that a Labour government is essential. It’s just that they also understand the consequences of handing Blair’s “New Labour” project another blank check.
Their fears are more than justified. Rumors circulating among journalists close to Downing Street suggest that, in the event of another three— figure majority, Blair is preparing to see off his critics and consolidate his authority by standing for re-election as Labour leader. With another four years in office, he plans to make the Blairite revolution irreversible.
Labour supporters are tired of being taken for granted, and increasingly coming to the conclusion that the ballot box is the only place where they have the power to make themselves count. This is why many of them, against their deepest political instincts, will wake up on May 5 with the solemn intention of hurting Tony Blair. It’s the only language he understands.
— David Clark is a former Labour government adviser.
