The last days of British Prime Minister Tony Blair are turning into a protracted agony. Despite plunging opinion poll ratings, the New Labour leader who won three successive general elections seems loath to face the fact that he has become an object of widespread public dislike.
Blair made the mistake of announcing that he would give way to a successor before the next general election. Ever since, the key question in British politics has been: When is he going to name the date of his departure? That moment may have drawn closer following two abysmal by-election results for the Labour Party last week. On top of this, the prime minister’s position has now been publicly questioned by Charles Clarke, the former home secretary who was sacked by Blair in May.
That there is a growing sense of urgency about the leadership issue has much to do with the rejuvenation of the Tory Party under its new leader David Cameron. For the first time in years, the Tories are establishing a consistent opinion poll lead over the Labour Party; many MPs are beginning to feel that the longer Blair remains leader, the less chance they have of retaining their seats beyond the next general election.
Nobody, it is safe to say, is more earnestly praying for Blair to make his exit than Gordon Brown, whose own leadership ambitions Blair has repeatedly contrived to thwart. The bitter rivalry between the prime minister and his brooding Scottish colleague has long been an open secret. Many are the occasions when it has been reported that relations between the two men have sunk to an all-time low. To be fair to Brown, he has some reason to feel cheated and ill-used. Following the untimely death of the Labour leader, John Smith, in 1994, Brown and Blair both wanted to claim the succession. In the event, Brown agreed to support Blair’s leadership bid - but on the understanding that Blair would eventually step aside and allow Brown to take over from him. Time and again, he has been led to believe that Blair was about to honor his side of the bargain, only to find that he has once more been duped.
Gordon Brown has been a central figure in the creation of New Labour, in the transformation of a party of the left, with its roots in working class socialism, into a modern business-orientated party much like the US Democratic Party. As chancellor of the exchequer for the past nine years, he has, moreover, presided over a sustained period of national prosperity. It is thus natural for him to see himself as the prime minister in waiting, and the coming months could witness him at last stepping into Blair’s shoes following what is hoped will be an “orderly succession”. However, with every day that passes the chancellor is bound to feel that time may not be on his side and that he could yet for some reason - the sudden emergence perhaps of a plausible rival candidate - be robbed of what he regards as his rightful inheritance. Added to this, there is the long-term threat posed to Brown and his party by an energetic new Tory leader. And Rupert Murdoch is now hinting that he may transfer his affections to the Tories. All this helps to explain why Gordon Brown has set about trying to sell himself to the British public with an eagerness that smacks of desperation.
The last few weeks have seen Brown announcing that the Labour government is committed to launching a new generation of nuclear weapons. It is a strategy that it is bound to antagonize old-style Labour Party leftists and that is just what Brown intends. At the same time, he has been indicating that as prime minister he will be every bit as committed to national security and to the “war on terror” as Tony Blair. Of a piece with this stance, Brown has taken to presenting himself as a vociferous patriot who believes that the British should be proud of their imperial past; spurning multiculturalism, he maintains furthermore that it behooves newcomers to Britain to accommodate themselves to British values and mores. Worrying that English voters may not care for the fact that he is a Scotsman, Brown is purposefully wrapping himself in the Union Jack.
But the chancellor’s efforts at reinventing himself on the terms of today’s celebrity culture are almost certainly ill conceived. No amount of reinvention can efface Brown’s chief handicap: That he is in an integral part of a government that is unloved — unloved because of the Iraq war, unloved because of its increasing authoritarianism, unloved above all perhaps because after nine years in power its leading personnel have become wearisomely over-familiar. Even if he does succeed Tony Blair in the near future, Brown will soon be obliged to call a general election in order to confirm his authority, and given the Labour Party’s mounting unpopularity, he may well lose. The chancellor must be finding it hard to quell the suspicion that he has drawn the short straw.
— Neil Berry, a British journalist, is working on a book about British Zionists.
