London
THERE’S A WEEK TO GO until the British election, and it’s a typical day for Tony Blair. During the morning press conference, he is variously accused, by reporters and opponents, of having lied to take his country to war in Iraq, of having covered up advice from senior lawyers that the war was illegal, and of having smothered internal dissent about his foreign policy. After lunch, on the stump in the west of England, he is pressing the flesh of some hesitant-looking voters when one turns away, and with hands clasped firmly to her sides, says, “I will not shake the hand of a killer.” Over dinner back in London, he hears news that a veteran Labour MP has left his party to join the left wing and antiwar Liberal Democrats, urging voters to “give Mr. Blair a bloody nose” in the election this Thursday.
Then, just before he crawls into his Downing Street bed, the prime minister receives the latest batch of opinion polls from tomorrow’s newspapers. Labour is increasing its lead over the Conservatives–to 10 percentage points in one poll–pointing to another huge, historic parliamentary majority of perhaps more than 100 seats. It is hard to recall an election anywhere in recent memory when a political leader so apparently disliked, despised, and distrusted was so assured of being kept in office with a solid mandate for another term. But this curious state of affairs is only one aspect of the enigma that is Tony Blair and modern British politics.
To Americans who follow these things, the standing of the British prime minister is hard to fathom. American conservatives revere him as the steadfast ally of President George Bush, the solid friend of America who stood firm in the darkest days of the war against terrorism. Bush himself, though diplomatically quiet during the campaign, has not disguised his desire to see Blair continue in office. Yet Democrats, even those who opposed the war, admire the way Blair has done something they have signally failed to do: take the main left-of-center party out of the wilderness and fashion it into the most effective electoral machine in Western politics.
The Democratic party’s high priests of electoral strategy have flocked to London in the last few months to offer help to Blair’s campaign and, perhaps, to learn a thing or two themselves. Bob Shrum, the eight-time losing presidential campaign adviser, was here this month. Joe Trippi, Howard Dean’s campaign manager, has also sipped tea with Blair at Downing Street. “I wasn’t really there to offer advice. I admire him enormously,” Trippi told me.
How is it that the man lionized by both George Bush and Joe Trippi could be so loathed by the British, with apparently equal energy and, it seems, in an oddly parallel way, by both sides of the political divide? And how is it that, despite the loathing, he still seems assured of victory–and is set to become only the second British prime minister in more than a century to win three straight parliamentary majorities?
Blair’s approval ratings are certainly low for an incumbent prime minister seeking reelection. In a MORI poll this month, only a quarter of voters said they like him and his policies. Almost half said they dislike him. On the left, Blair-hatred is palpable. It reaches out from the pages of the left-wing newspapers; it screeches from the halls of academia; it is muttered over beers wherever Labour activists gather. One little illustration will stand for the billions of words that have been spewed onto the prime minister’s reputation: In the Guardian last week, Richard Gott, a former Stalinist who should know a thing or two about the subject, actually argued that Blair was a war criminal who should be tried and imprisoned.
The evident progress in Iraq since the elections in January has done nothing to drain the poison resulting from the prime minister’s support for the United States. When he is asked about Iraq, Blair pointedly doesn’t mention President Bush. Socialists will never forgive him for standing up to the French, the Russians, and the United Nations. It is a commonplace, indeed an almost universally accepted truth, that Blair lied about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. The prime minister’s repeated denials now draw only belly laughs from most of his fellow Labour members. According to Brian Sedgemore, the old leftie who quit last week to join the Liberal Democrats, more than 100 of Labour’s 400 MPs detest him. Only a few brave and independent-minded thinkers on the left dare confront this wave of obloquy. For the rest, Blair is a Bush-loving traitor.
But if Blair is a punching bag for his own side, he is a target for howitzer practice for the Conservative opposition. Speaking for a sizeable body of conservative opinion, the Daily Mail screams abuse at Blair from its front pages. In the last few weeks alone, the paper has claimed that the prime minister (and his equally despised wife) have, among other things, made the British sicker, poorer, and enslaved to American imperialism. More temperate conservatives despise the prime minister with a passion that is quite rare these days in cynical British politics. Matthew Parris, my colleague at the Times, has opined publicly that Blair is, at best, completely insane; at worst, a dark figure manipulating his own people for nefarious reasons.
It is the liberal metropolitan elite that is most vocal in its hostility to Blair’s support for America. But the opposing team also includes a certain type of trendy Conservative. On the right, anti-Americanism is enjoying a revival in English politics, and, allied with a Tory mentality that thinks the world should be left to run its own affairs, this sentiment is understandably hostile to Blair’s internationalism. But opposition to, indeed disdain for, Blair on the right runs much deeper than simple opposition to the Iraq war and American foreign policy. Indeed many Conservatives who supported the Iraq war and who have impeccable pro-American credentials cannot stand the prime minister. Since Americans often see Blair as a candidate for sainthood, it is probably worth exploring the reasons he is detested by British conservatives.
Undoubtedly part of the animus Blair arouses on the right owes to his remarkable success, Clinton-style, at repositioning Labour in the middle ground of British politics. Not only has Blair bucked his party and taken a firmly pro-American stance, he has shifted Labour to the center on big domestic issues. Even as he was fighting an uphill battle over Iraq, Blair took on the left of his party over two more small but symbolic issues: the introduction of a more realistic tuition system for Britain’s chronically underfunded universities and the extension of private choice into the bloated bureaucracy of the National Health Service.
A Downing Street adviser told me that, if reelected, Blair will push even more aggressively to reform public services and will tackle the welfare spending threatening to undermine Britain’s economic success. Such theft of Conservative issues has redefined Labour, but it drives the Tories nuts. Blair’s governing style arouses reasonable indignation on the right. Many conservatives object to what they see as an unprepossessing authoritarian streak in his government. The absurd ban on fox-hunting Blair piloted through parliament was a mean, illiberal piece of pandering to the left of his party and a clarion call to the worst class instincts of the British. He has run a troublingly centralized, informal system of government where quiet chats on the prime minister’s sofas seem to be the conduit for dramatic changes in the country’s direction. Blair has also, despite promises to reform public services, presided over a steady and stealthy expansion of the state through increased taxes. If Labour is reelected, the tax take as a proportion of national income will rise above 40 percent, its highest level in 25 years.
Clearly impatient with patriotic talk, Blair shows no interest in the idea of Britain. Immigration policy looks at times like a free-for-all. He has dismantled half the British constitution and is extremely eager to hand over large chunks of British sovereignty to the European Union. And though his enemies are wrong and unfair when they claim he lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, the charge has had such public resonance because there has often been something slightly tangential about Blair’s relationship to the arc of political truth. And yet, with fewer friends on either the left or right than when he was first elected eight years ago, he seems certain to win. Why?
Part of the explanation is that, for most voters, even those who profess unhappiness with Blair, Iraq, and even these other political issues have been eclipsed by the economy. Blair is, implausible as it may seem, right when he claims that the British economy has been enjoying its longest period of economic growth since the industrial revolution. Blair also faces a weak and divided opposition. The Conservative party has not yet adapted to the trauma of the loss of its governing majority eight years ago; it has a leader in Michael Howard who is failing to persuade the public that it is fit for office.
Labour is further helped by an electoral system that skews the results absurdly in their party’s favor. If Labour and the Conservatives finish with the same proportion of the vote this week, Labour is likely to have close to 100 more seats than the Tories. And other factors are at work. Blair’s own enemies on the left claim that Labour’s impending victory has nothing to do with the prime minister. Labour will win comfortably, they say, because voters know they will be changing prime ministers soon. Blair, in a move unprecedented for a British prime minister, has said publicly that he will not fight another election as leader of the Labour party after this one. Everyone expects him to step down in the second half of his next four-year term to make way for Gordon Brown, his chancellor of the exchequer. Brown’s ratings are slightly higher than Blair’s; the decision to bring him to the forefront in the campaign was a smart one.
In other words, and perhaps strangely to American observers, if Labour wins, as it is universally expected to, it will be in spite of, not because of, Blair, a bruised and battered prime minister. When he steps down some time in the next few years (no one expects him to be allowed to continue right up to the next election, as he would prefer), he will depart unmourned in Britain, unloved by his own party–despite leading it to once unimaginable success–and despised by his opponents.
There is something tragic about this enforced twilight of Blair’s career. He started out in 1997 with a reputation as a slightly slippery figure, a clever, unprincipled, poll-driven political huckster. But the cause of his undoing was a courageous decision to support President Bush against his party, half his government, and the bulk of his people, in a worthy and honorable campaign to rid the world of a dangerous menace and liberate 25 million people. He deserves better than the Pyrrhic victory he will win this week.
Gerard Baker, U.S. editor of the Times of London, is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.
