The state of play in British politics today
By Michael Barone - US News
Some time around 1989 or 1990 I got a call from the press office of the British Embassy in Washington. "Can you possibly help us out?" the caller asked. "We have two young Labor MPs in town, and we're having a lunch for them with journalists. They're both very bright and they will be cabinet ministers in a Labor government, if there is ever another Labor government, which of course we know there won't." I was open for lunch that day and, as a follower of British politics, I thought it would be enjoyable to meet two bright young Labor MPs, so I said yes. I don't remember much that the two Laborites said, but I do remember my impressions. They were both young, in their 30s. One was cheerful and ingratiating, the other was dour but not unpleasant. They both were obviously very bright, had interesting ideas about public policy and were knowledgeable about American politics. They clearly would be able cabinet members if, as seemed not very likely, Labor ever won a general election. So went my first and, so far, only lunch with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
Today, they are Britain's prime minister and chancellor of the exchequer. They hold these two posts, it is generally thought, as the result of an agreement reached by Blair and Brown in May 1994, after the sudden death of Labor Party leader John Smith, at a dinner in a restaurant called Granita in the trendy Islington section of London. In June 2002, I went to dinner there myself, to see where history was reportedly made. It's a good thing I went there then; Granita has since closed, though I thought the food was pretty good.
Blair and Brown now are in their early 50s and are starting their eighth year in office—one of the longest tenures for a prime minister and the longest ever for a chancellor. It has been an unusual and interesting partnership. Blair has ceded much of the control for domestic policy to Brown, who uses the treasury—which has the powers of both our Treasury Department and our Office of Management and the Budget—to micromanage domestic departments by imposing numerical goals and keeping a tight rein on money. He also ceded to Brown the decision on whether Britain should adopt the euro. Brown set out five tests of whether the British and Continental economies were converging enough to make the euro desirable and then announced in June 2003 that the tests had not been met and were not likely to be met in the next year. Blair is known to be an enthusiast for the European Union and wanted to go for the euro, but Brown's five tests and Labor's promise to hold a referendum on the issue has blocked the issue for two full terms in office; no one expects a decision and a referendum before Blair calls the next general election, widely expected for May or June 2005.
Blair in turn has full charge of foreign policy, and has been loyally supported by Brown, notably on Iraq. The air in London is always filled with speculation about tension between the two, and Blair and Brown acolytes conduct vigorous feuds in Westminster and in the press. Brown, it is assumed, wants to be prime minister himself some day and chafes at his number two status. Yet he has reason to take satisfaction at his current position. He is probably the longest serving and surely the most powerful finance minister in the world; he has a stature in world affairs greater than many heads of government; he has a record in office that is generally counted as successful. The relationship between the two men must be fascinating. They were office mates after they were first elected to Parliament in 1983; they shared a zest for the New Labor ideas which have brought them such political triumph, and were staunch allies in advancing New Labor to the party leadership; they surely respect each other's somewhat different strengths. But Blair must to some degree chafe at the fact that he has less control over domestic policy than other prime ministers and Brown must to some degree chafe at the fact that he isn't prime minister and the possibility that in some conceivable circumstances (imagine Blair winning and serving out a third term, and then Labor being defeated) may never be. They talk and meet regularly, sometimes, it is said, stormily; but no one except perhaps their wives seems to know how they really get on. And may never, unless they write (as many British politicians do) frank memoirs; but these must be many years away.
Blair was raised in a Conservative household and, in the opinion of many, could have made a career just as easily as a Conservative; might even have done so, had his wife Cherie not been such a strong (and reportedly more left-wing) Laborite. Brown, the son of a Church of Scotland minister, could only be Labor. Many Labor MPs doubt Blair's bona fides as a party leader and feel that Brown is more "one of us."
How are they doing?
We could start with the macroeconomy. It was long an article of faith among analysts of British politics that elections were mostly about the economy; if the times were good, the incumbents would win; if not, not. But that is no longer the rule. By any measure, the macroeconomy was in good shape in May 1997 when John Major's Conservatives were swept out of office by the huge New Labor landslide. The Conservatives' poll ratings had been dismal ever since September 1992, when Britain was forced to go off the European exchange-rate mechanism; this amounted to a devaluation of the pound, and a loss of wealth for the increasing number of Britons who owned their homes and a loss of purchasing power for consumers. The Conservatives' reputation for good economic management was destroyed. New Labor's record of economic management has been good. One of Gordon Brown's first acts as chancellor was to grant total independence to the Bank of England, and it has paid off. The rate of inflation has been low, and Britain's economy has been growing much more vigorously than those of continental Europe, where Germany and France have had hardly any economic growth and zero job growth now for years. The macroeconomy remains a strong issue for Blair and Brown, but it is not the only issue, and others may be more important.
One is services. New Labor came to office with many plans for improving education, welfare, the National Health Services and law enforcement. But the results have been uneven. Welfare reform American style was largely dropped early on. Spending on education and the National Health Service has been greatly increased, especially since the June 2001 election, but with results that are not universally seen as successful: Laborites point to some gains, Conservatives say things are getting worse and worse. Another important issue is immigration. Britain has had trouble dealing with asylum seekers and a few weeks ago the immigration minister had to resign after it was revealed that the government was letting in more Romanian immigrants than policy permitted. A week after his U-turn on the EU constitution referendum Blair made another U-turn, promising a complete reexamination of immigration policy. Again, he was trying to preempt Conservative criticism; again, he risked his reputation for forthrightness and undercut his own previous pronouncements.
As a foreign observer only occasionally in Britain, I am not well placed to judge who is right about the services issues. But what seems plain is that these are not necessarily issues that work as well for Labor as they did in 1997 or 2001. They have no Tory government to blame problems on now; the memory of the ragged last Major years is dimming. Iain Duncan Smith, the Conservative leader from September 2001 until November 2003, was not a commanding figure in Parliament or on the stump, but he did set in motion a process by which the Conservatives are coming up with some plausible alternative policies on services. The current leader, Michael Howard, has the advantage of having served as home secretary in the Major government and does have the sense of command Duncan Smith and the 1997-2001 Conservative leader, William Hague, lacked.
Duncan Smith and Howard and the overwhelming majority of Conservative MPs have supported Blair on Iraq. But many Labor MPs and voters seethe with anger at Blair's policy, and, even after Blair persuaded George W. Bush to seek yet another United Nations resolution in early 2003, not much more than a majority of Labor MPs voted for military action. The arguments that Blair made for the war—especially the supposedly "dodgy dossier"—have hurt his credibility since. New Labor came to office with a spin machine, modeled partly on Bill Clinton's operation, that served Blair well in opposition, in the 1997 election and for some time afterward. Alastair Campbell, one of his three or four top advisers, was a master at spin and at bludgeoning reporters and editors to tell the story Downing Street's way. But after a time spin starts to wear off. After the suicide of weapons inspector David Kelly in July 2003, serious charges were made against the Blair government. The Hutton commission investigating the charges exonerated Blair and Labor officials, but polls showed that the public rejected the findings. While Americans may believe (I certainly do) that Blair has done a magnificent job on Iraq, the issue has hurt him at home, and not just on Iraq.
Blair has also been hurt on issues relating to the European Community. Blair is a committed Europeanist, convinced that British leadership (i.e., he himself) can make the EU less of a restrictionist, bureaucratic, centralizing institution and more of a liberating, efficiency-promoting, empowering institution. Blair seemed eager to drop the pound and adopt the euro; Gordon Brown has blocked the way. Polls always showed the public heavily against the euro and it is a dead letter in British politics now. Then there is the question of the EU constitution, which seemed dead when Spain and Poland opposed it last fall but which came alive after the Spanish election March 14 produced a government that dropped its objections. (See my forthcoming column in U.S. News on this issue.) Conservatives charged that the constitution would destroy British sovereignty and demanded a referendum on the issue; Blair adamantly opposed one; polls showed the public strongly opposed. But on April 20 he made a U-turn and promised a referendum—some time after, it appeared, the expected May or June 2005 election. The promise to hold a referendum on the euro kept the issue from hurting Labor in the 1997 and 2001 elections; the promise to hold a referendum on an EU constitution (which still needs to be finally negotiated, and may not be) may keep the issue from hurting Labor in 2005. But the U-turn may have done something to chip away further at Blair's credibility.
And there is some tension with Brown on the issue. Late last year, Brown wrote a column in the Conservative, euroskeptic Daily Telegraph criticizing the continental countries for their inflexible labor markets and praising Britain's flexibility and consequent economic growth. This was a shot across Blair's bow. The more so because the Telegraph didn't commission the article; Brown sent it in.
The media environment in Britain is quite different from what Americans are used to. Here the old-line media—the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News—insist that they are objective but in fact tilt, to varying degrees, to the left; they are more reliably liberal on cultural issues than on economics; they are not reliably pro-Democratic but they are reliably anti-Republican. Britain has a more openly partisan print press. The Telegraph is true blue Conservative, euroskeptic, royalist, and devoted to the countryside (and against Labor backbenchers' favorite reform, the banning of fox-hunting). The Times staunchly supported Margaret Thatcher and John Major in the 1980s and early 1990s and is just about as euroskeptic as the Telegraph. But proprietor Rupert Murdoch switched to Tony Blair and New Labor before the 1997 election and has stuck with them since. So, perhaps more influentially, has Murdoch's tabloid Sun, the highest circulation newspaper in Britain. The day after John Major's Conservatives unexpectedly won the 1992 election, the Sun headline proudly proclaimed, in the demotic argot of its readers, "IT WAS THE SUN WOT WON IT." It might have done the same after the elections of 1997 and 2001.
There is left media as well, the broadsheet Guardian and Independent and the supposedly neutral BBC. These are the organs of the bien pensant professional class, enraged at Blair's policy on Iraq, often scornful of New Labor's relative moderation. And the standard of reporting and attribution in British media, left and right, is, let us say, dodgier than in America's major media. The net result is that the media is mostly anti-Blair. Alastair Campbell left No. 10 Downing Street several months ago, and it is harder for Blair to get his message across. In America a Democratic president can count on generally favorable coverage in the established old media, and a Republican president can count on generally favorable coverage from the Wall Street Journal editorial pages (and its usually neutral news pages), on talk radio and on the Fox News Channel. Blair can count on such coverage only in the Times and Sun (and not always there) and on Murdoch's satellite TV Sky News. The buzz around London the week Blair made his U-turn was that Murdoch had told Blair he must have a referendum or he would lose the support of the Sun. Sources familiar with Blair's thinking and with Michael Howard's laughed this off: That is not how business is done and, besides, Blair knows and has known all along where the Murdoch press stands. There didn't need to be any threat.
Polls currently show the race between Labor and Conservative as about even; I will spare you the arguments over which polling methods are more accurate. This is far from a terrible situation for Blair. From the early 1960s until 1997, British polls have mostly showed the government behind the opposition; my theory is that British voters have figured out that expressing opposition to the government party is one way to cabin in the theoretically near-dictatorial powers of the prime minister under the British parliamentary system. By running well ahead of the Tories for the first six years of his premiership, Blair showed vastly more strength than the prime ministers of the preceding 40 years; by running about even now Blair is showing more, but not vastly more. Since the incumbent parties, despite the polls, won half the elections from 1964 to 1992, this is not bad. Labor has an additional advantage. The constituency boundaries in effect in 2001 and which will be in effect for the next general election heavily favor Labor and disadvantage the Conservatives. British psephologists say that the Tories will have to beat Labor by as much as 8 percent in the popular vote to win a majority in the House of Commons. There is no polling evidence that they are in a position to do this.
To the extent they think about British politics, I expect that most Americans assume that Tony Blair is in a position of overwhelming strength. That was once so, but is no longer. But he is still in a position of strength, though he and his party have weaknesses which they did not two years ago and certainly did not in 2001, when the results were almost precisely the same as in 1997. In Michael Howard, Blair faces for the first time a leader of the opposition whose skills, experience and sense of command make him a plausible prime minister. Never has a party increased its number of seats in the House of Commons by as much as the Conservatives need to do to win a majority. But it could happen.
More likely, the Conservatives will gain seats but remain still well short of a majority, leaving Labor with a normal rather majority of perhaps 100 seats rather than the supermajority of about 250 they have at present. This would make some considerable difference. The Laborites most likely to lose seats are New Labor loyalists swept in the landslides of 1997 and 2001. The parliamentary Labor party will then have a larger proportion of trade unionists and intellectual left-wingers—MPs who would much prefer Brown to Blair. Earlier this year Blair carried a bill for topping up college fees (let's pass over the specifics here) by only a few votes and after a conspicuous intervention by Gordon Brown. He would have a hard time quelling such a revolt in a House of Commons with only a normal majority for his party. Then there is the question of what will happen if, after the next general election, voters reject the EU constitution in a referendum. The buzz is that Blair may have to resign. In response, the BBC reported that Blair was determined to serve a full third term.
In America Tony Blair is a colossus. But in Britain he has come to be seen as just another politician, with considerable strengths that should not be underestimated, but also with weaknesses that he did not have as recently as 18 months ago. A year from now he will have been prime minister for eight years, a tenure as long as an American president can serve except under the most unusual circumstances, and during most of that time he seemed likely to, in Margaret Thatcher's words, "go on and on and on." But now it is becoming clear that he has a shorter future than past as prime minister and Americans, whose presidents have found him a strong and steady ally, must think about dealing with a post-Blair Britain. |
