LESS LOONY

His Regency Palace, with its Indian-style exterior and ornate Sino-Egyptian decoration, still attracts flocks of visitors — almost as many as crowded around the stalls set up by Labour party activists in the lobby of the modernish Brighton Convention Center. All the usual suspects were represented: among others, Amnesty International, Action for Southern Africa, and Compassion in World Farming, which is committed to amending the Treaty of Rome to reclassify animals from “agricultural goods” to “sentient beings.”

The disjunction between Brighton-as-royal-play-ground and Brighton-as-host-to -Labour is matched, indeed trumped, by the disjunction between the gritty old L abour party of the countr y’s trade unions and 1990s party leader Tony Blair’s “New Labour for a New Britain.” Picture this. Educated in posh public schools (private schools, to non-Brits) and at Oxford, Blair strides to center stage, well-coiffed and elegantly shod, flashing a smile that would have done Dwight Eisenhower proud. He has just come from a successful battle to delete from his party’s constitution its notorious Clause 4, in which it had long promised a government takeover of the means of production and distribution. And from another battle that reduced the voting power of the unions in the Labour party. And still another that forced the local party unit from Leeds North East to kick a candidate off: the ballot because her views were too left-wing

True. Blair doesn’t call his list of promises, which he guarantees will be enacted within the lifespan of the next parliament, a “Contract with Britain.” He refers to it instead as “a bargain between us and the people” — avoiding Newt Gingrich’s word, one conference delegate told me, only because “the Americans have already done it.” No squeezing the rich until “the pips squeak,” as previous Labour governments had done. Lower taxes for “ordinary hard- working families.” Reexamination of the welfare state, with cash penalties for those who refuse to participate in an expanded job-training program. Greater parental control of schools. A crackdown on what one Blair lieutenant calls ” winos and beggars.” Devolution of power from the central government in Whitehall to regional and local government. “Thousands of extra police officers on the beat.” Every child to have “access to a proper lap-top computer.”

Reinventing British Labour? Well, almost. For, mingled with Blair’s modern- sounding references to “a new age, “the new economy of the future,” “a new technological economic challenge,” is a bit of old-time socialist religion. And I do mean religion. But not one that refers directly to God, unmentioned by this church-going high Anglican aspirant to his nation’s highest elective office. “Although our party is more Methodist than Marxist,” one MP told me, ” it’s bad form for a British politician to use God in a political speech.” Instead, Blair quotes Scripture without attribution — “I am my brother’s keeper” — and speaks of “A belief in society. . . . [We] are of the same family, community.” This, and not nationalization or economics, he says, “is my socialism.”

So too is his disinclination to rely on market forces to produce the information superhighway modern Britain needs. That, says Blair in a sentence that could have been spoken by A1 Gore in a moment of unguarded candor, ” requires a supreme national effort. The market won’t do it.” Nor will it produce “a proper national integrated transport system. We should sit down as a country and plan it. Not wait for the free market to build it.”

This is not quite socialist enough for many party activists. Perhaps the most revealing feature of this conference was the chatter in the corridors and bars. While speaker after speaker droned on in support of Blair’s “new Labour,” activist after activist grumbled that the party had lost its way, abandoning socialism in favor of me-too Thatcherism. These activists are too hungry for power, after 16 years out of office, to shatter the unity they know they must maintain if they are to win the next general election. Margaret Beckett, a leftwing member of Blair’s shadow cabinet, repeatedly responded to my questions about policy with, “We want to get elected. To get power we must first be elected. And that requires unity.” So the left waits. And contents itself with three important victories.

First, it has partially tempered Blair’s general reformist homilies with specific platform planks that stake out old-left positions. Blair may have eliminated Clause 4’s general call for government ownership, but his party is pledged to reverse the planned privatization of the railroads and to prevent the privatization of the post office.

Blair may have toned down the rhetoric of class warfare, but Labour is pledged to eliminate the stock options of the “fat cats” and “robbebarons” who manage the nation’s privatized utilities. Labour may now be opposed to what the shadow chancellor Gordon Brown called in his address to the conference ” inflationary boom,” but old party warhorse Roy Hattersley promises that the return of Labour to power will mark the resurrection of Keynesian demand- boosting economic policies.

A second victory for the left has been its ability to get Blair to leave the party considerable room to swing in its direction after the election. Blair, of course, denies this. A few months ago, he asked me, “What did Bill Clinton do wrong?” and professed himself eager to avoid the president’s mistake of running in the center but then governing from the left. But his party’s activists have plans of their own, and, given the structure of British government, they might just prevail.

The man y left-wingers who will be in Blair’s cabinet-including his top deputy, John Prescott — will have considerable power to use the loopholes their leader has left them. Blair speaks of Labour’s desire “to increase economically and socially productive spending,” a description broad enough to accommodate any new social program. He calls for “fair” taxes, a phrase that brings smiles to the faces of the redistributionists in his party. He is infatuated with ” communitarianism,” which his activists are willing to accept as a new label on their old bottle of red vine.

A third left-wing triumph was to get Blair, who once advocated withdrawal from the European Community, to sign on to the European Union’s social program, which would impose costly labor standards on British employers. This makes it possible for Labour to introduce socialist policies to Britain through the back door of Brussels.

Make no mistake: Blair is no Bolshie-in-waiting. He knows that the global economy reduces any government’s control of its fiscal and monetary policies. He knows that a healthy private sector is necessary to the fulfillment of his dreams for a prosperous Britain. And he knows that he must keep his left in check if he is to govern Britain into the next century.

With Labour leading Tories by 251 points in the polls, it seems a sure bet that Mrs. Blairwill be changing the drapes in 10 Downing Street after the next general election. Tory Prime Minister John Major can’t seem to persuade the electorate that his government has a plausible program for the future, and Tony Blair has not put a foot wrong. Indeed, he has done almost everything right.

He has shed the party of Clause 4″ and complete domination by Luddite trade unions. He has refused to sign on to the high-tax, high-spend policies that in the past frightened the middle and skilled working classes into the Tories” arms. He has sent his son to a school run by parents rather than by unions and educrats, to howls of anguish from his party’s left and applause from parents who see a man committed to his children, rather than an outworn ideology. He has remodeled a party that once appeared to be on the verge of world-historic extinction and made it electable. Not a bad thing; like all democracies, Britain needs more than one functioning political party.