How Blair's government came to look febrile and incompetent
Only now are we seeing the tangible benefits of Labour government. Those who are deserting the Labour Party, intending to support fringe parties or not to vote at all, betray the millions who have every reason to be thankful for the past seven years, and every reason to be fearful if the Tories now return.
The view that this government has failed the poor is profoundly wrong. The minimum wage, though introduced at too low a level, will have risen 35 per cent in five years by October, much faster than general pay. Pensioner poverty has fallen by a quarter since 1996-97. The government is on course to reduce child poverty, also by a quarter, in this financial year. These are astonishing achievements because poverty is measured relatively and the effect of market forces, particularly in a boom driven by the service industries, is to increase the incomes of the better-off.
At the same time, the NHS and state schools have benefited from higher spending. Hospital waiting lists and waits to see GPs are both falling fast; deaths from heart disease and cancer are well down. Schools no longer struggle to buy books and the roof no longer leaks as children try to learn. The number of teaching assistants has more than doubled since 1997 and Sure Start, for parents of pre-school children in deprived areas, flourishes. It is easy to cut funding, thereby plunging schools and hospitals into crisis and children into poverty. The road to rebuilding public services and reducing poverty is longer and slower. To renounce Labour now is a betrayal at least as great as that committed in the 1980s, when activists allowed Margaret Thatcher a free run by indulging in the politics of the playpen.
But what is also a betrayal is to cling to office in order to "see through" a discredited foreign policy. Tony Blair is like a casino player who, having put a small sum of money on a losing number, keeps doubling his stake in the belief that the number must come up eventually. He decided, soon after George W Bush's election, that he must become a close ally of the US president. This decision - a perfectly reasonable and not particularly important one in early 2001 - and the later decision to accept the president's insistence that we are all at war have led him into ever greater disasters. After being branded a liar (on the threat posed by Iraq), he now finds himself implicated in the torture and abuses of an occupying power. Almost incredibly, he has become a silent accomplice to the policies of Ariel Sharon, Israel's leader. On issues that he may truly care about, such as the environment and world poverty, his closeness to President Bush pre-empts any possibility of effective leadership. As a political force, at home or abroad, our PM is as dead as John Cleese's celebrated parrot.
It is sheer frivolity, in these circumstances, to argue that Mr Blair should stay because Labour has won two landslide election victories and generally kept well ahead in the polls, even midterm. The party no longer needs to hide behind him. It is Gordon Brown who has given the government a sense of direction and purpose and who is most associated with its successes, Mr Blair who is associated with spin, short-term fixes and recklessness abroad. If Labour is ever to achieve the "progressive consensus" it craves - and a lasting end to the Thatcherite assumptions that still pervade British politics - it must move on from Mr Blair, who seems to find it necessary to apologise for his party and its values whenever possible.
Will Mr Brown make a difference? Perhaps only in style. But the style is precisely the point: what seemed right in the sunny years of the mid- to late 1990s, with its belief in the post-cold war dividend, its hopes for peace in the Middle East and its buoyant world economy, may not be right for the darker outlook of the early 21st century. Mr Brown, to be sure, is also a moderniser and also holds views - about privatisation and "flexible labour markets", for example - that will be unpalatable to many on the left. But these are incidental. He does not, like Mr Blair, regard the transformation of public services as central to his political mission and therefore has no need to come up with such meddlesome and irrelevant ideas as foundation hospitals, which reduce rather than enhance the voters' confidence in public services.
Again, Mr Brown may be as pro-American as Mr Blair, perhaps more so. But playing a role on the world stage is simply not as important to him. He prefers the dogged work of negotiating debt relief for poor countries to the grander gestures of what is laughably called liberal interventionism.
Mr Brown is an unglamorous figure who also lacks the common touch. These are said to be fatal handicaps for a modern political leader. But we live in changed times. The Blair government now looks febrile and even incompetent, with its U-turn on the EU referendum, its botched abolition of the Lord Chancellor, its baffling manoeuvres on immigration and, above all, its involvement with the growing catastrophe in Iraq. Mr Brown's more dour and methodical approach is now more likely to strike a chord with an apprehensive nation. And it is more likely to make Labour feel it is truly in government rather than just minding the shop.
Mr Brown, understandably, is reluctant to give the slightest encouragement even in private to his followers. But Labour MPs, who failed so lamentably to stop Britain going to war in Iraq or to hold ministers to any sort of account during the aftermath, should now summon up their courage at last, act in the interests of their natural supporters, and politely ask Mr Blair to vacate his position. They know, from his record at the Treasury, that Gordon works. They should not allow Tony to wreck it.
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
