It’s Still His Party

Crime in Britain is rising, educational standards are falling, bogus asylum-seeking is out of control, and the budget deficit signals that taxes will have to go up if the Labour government is to maintain its breathtaking expansion of the welfare state. No matter. The delegates gathered here by the shore for the Labour party’s annual conference are more or less content with Tony Blair’s domestic program as he laid it out last week: child care available to all from the age of two; four weeks’ paid vacation and 12 months’ maternity leave with pay; health care for all “without any regard to . . . wealth”; “a doubling of investment in drug treatment”; programs to put “power, wealth and opportunity in the hands of the many, not the few”; a rise in the minimum wage to about $9 per hour.

And they are positively ecstatic over his earlier decision to allow them to vent their class hatred by voting to ban fox hunting–a vote that will end the livelihoods of thousands of hard-working kennel-keepers, stable hands, hotel workers, and others who have never seen the inside of a grand manor; a vote from which the prime minister abstained; and a vote that triggered some bizarre protests during the conference. If your taste runs to ogling comely young (and therefore not a random sample of the breed) huntswomen as they strip down to thongs-with-bunny-tails, and plaster “Bollocks to Blair” stickers to their buttocks in protest against the ban before dashing into the chilly Channel, Brighton was the place to be last week.

Blair’s domestic program was red meat for the pride of lions that constitute the activist wing of his party. In part, he was acting on his deeply held conviction that he must use the remaining years of his political life–he will undoubtedly be elected to another five-year term sometime in the spring of 2005–to create what he calls “a just society and a strong community . . . [with] the individual . . . the driver of the system, not the state.” A consumer-driven welfare state is in Britain’s future if Blair, rather than the trade unions that constitute the principal financial backers and door-bell ringers of his party, has his way.

But in part, too, he was reminding those in his party who violently oppose his cooperation with America in ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein that he is indeed a man of the left, a social democrat to his core. That, and his proven ability to get all those now-grumpy politicians elected, is meant to offset the political liability of Iraq, a liability very much in the minds of delegates who had just learned of the deaths of two more British soldiers in Iraq, and who have been bombarded daily with stories and images of the hostage Kenneth Bigley and the agony of his family. Bigley’s brother addressed a fringe meeting to demand that Blair save “Ken,” as he is now known throughout Britain, by withdrawing from Iraq, an appeal made even more poignant by front-page photos of the hostage’s 86-year-old mother being taken to the hospital after collapsing from stress. Adding to the prime minister’s problems was the withdrawal of Tory support for his policy: Opposition leader Michael Howard unhelpfully chimed in with an interview in which he claimed that Blair “lied . . . over Iraq,” an even more serious charge than an earlier one that prompted Karl Rove to ban Howard from the White House.

Blair’s advisers had urged him to avoid any mention of Iraq in his address to the conference. He was having none of such advice, so after addressing what he called the “normal run of politics,” he turned to Iraq, opening with a well-received acknowledgment that the evidence about Saddam’s having weapons of mass destruction had turned out to be wrong. Then the stinger in the tail of this admission: “The problem is that I can apologize for the information that turned out to be wrong, but I can’t, sincerely at least, apologize for removing Saddam. The world is a better place with Saddam in prison, not in power.” In any event, his quasi-apology did the prime minister little good: An instant poll showed that 83 percent say Blair’s admission has done nothing to end the intraparty dispute over his policy in Iraq.

Blair then rejected two criticisms: that he has been “pandering to George Bush . . . in a cause that’s irrelevant to us,” and that the war in Iraq has “made matters worse, not better.” You can only believe those arguments, he said, if you believe that we are facing isolated acts of terrorism by isolated individuals–“not qualitatively different from the terrorism we have always lived with.” In which case, best not to provoke them.

His view is different, and worth quoting at length in the hope that Bush’s speechwriters might find inspiration in it:

There’s more, and just as good. All of which earned Blair some applause–best described as mild: Many of the delegates sat on their hands. Not until, that is, he uttered the words so dear to the hearts of the Labour activists who truly believe that none of this would have happened–not September 11, not Bali, not Beslan, not Madrid–if only the Israelis would end their oppression of the Palestinians.

The most enthusiastic applause for this portion of Blair’s remarks came, first, when he promised to make a revival of the Middle East peace process “a personal priority…after November.” Ah, after the American elections, when most delegates believe John Kerry will be president-elect, and the hated George W. Bush will be packing his cowboy boots, guns, and antiabortion pamphlets for a return to Crawford, Texas. The second round of cheers followed Blair’s statement that “two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in enduring peace, would do more to defeat this terrorism than bullets alone can ever do.” So it is those beastly Israelis, after all, who are responsible for everything from the destruction of the World Trade Center to the current insurgency in Iraq.

Blair knows better. He knows that Osama bin Laden is not some Palestinian freedom fighter. He knows, too, that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has the deaths of Western and even Shia infidels as his goal, not better lives for the Palestinians or, indeed, most Iraqis.

But this observer is inclined to forgive the prime minister a statement that he must have known would be interpreted by his party’s largely anti-Israel base as an attack on Israel. For one thing, he was fighting to prevent the delegates from adopting a resolution calling for the immediate withdrawal of British troops from Iraq. It wasn’t until late Wednesday evening, hours before the resolution to demand withdrawal was to come to a vote, and almost certainly to be carried, that Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and the prime minister brokered a deal with the trade unions who dominate the conference. In return for certain as-yet-unrevealed promises to push workplace legislation that the unions have been demanding, Straw and Blair got them to sign on to a compromise resolution that acknowledges that U.N. Resolution 1546, adopted unanimously by the Security Council in August, mandates the departure of U.K. forces at the end of 2005, unless–and here is the clause that Straw and Blair fought for–the Iraqi government asks that they remain.

Also, those who watch Blair’s question time on C-SPAN will know that he has consistently pointed out to his anti-Israel, we-hate-Sharon critics that there can be no progress in the Middle East until the Palestinians stop the intifada. That not only irritates a significant number of members of his own party, but causes a great deal of tut-tutting by the BBC-led chattering classes at their dinner parties.

Finally, keep in mind that as large a portion of the delegates in Brighton would, given the chance, vote for John Kerry as would the delegates who gathered in Boston. Indeed, Blair’s deputy prime minister, John Prescott, who runs the country when Blair is unavailable, has called George W. Bush “another right-winger who used compassionate conservatism as his sound bite.” Nevertheless, in reviewing issues such as global warming, and the problems of Africa, Blair admonished this anti-Bush and largely anti-American crowd, “Understand this reality. Little of it [reform] will happen except in alliance with the United States.” The loud applause he received when calling for greater participation in the European Union turned to stony silence when he added, “I know to cast out the transatlantic alliance would be disastrous for Britain.”

So his geopolitical vision remains as it has been since he took office in 1997: Britain has a moral obligation to spread Western values to peoples “the world over”; the alliance with America must be maintained; Britain must adopt the euro and the new European constitution to remain at the head table in a united Europe’s policy discussions; Britain is the natural leader of the new members of the E.U., notably the former Soviet satellites, creating a counterpoise to the Franco-German alliance; and Blair’s special relationship with America, combined with his leadership of Europe, will make Britain the indispensable bridge between the feuding Europe and America. Britannia might no longer rule the waves, but she will dominate international relations.

Nothing that happened in Brighton should encourage Blair to believe that he is any closer to garnering his party’s support for this grand (grandiose?) vision than he was before he spent a less than delightful week at the shore. He remains a lonely leader, sustained by the one thing his political partners understand: Iraq or no Iraq, he is their meal ticket. As if to emphasize their dependence on his ability to attract the middle-England voters the Labour party needs if it is to remain in power, Blair chose, Moses-like, to summarize his program in ten major points, a reminder that it is he who led them out of the wilderness of opposition.

Irwin M. Stelzer is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, director of economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute, and a columnist for the Sunday Times (London).