Blair for Beginners

Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since 1997 and leader of the main left-of-centre party in Great Britain since 1994, is perhaps the most well known and popular foreign politician in the United States of America. While Germany is a greater economic power than the UK, and a key competitor of the US in industries such as motor manufacturing and pharmaceuticals, most Americans would be hard pressed to pick the German Chancellor out from a police line-up. But when George W. Bush said that “America has no truer friend than Great Britain”, his comment referred directly to the close relationship between the White House and Downing Street. It is significant that he followed those words with there: “Once again, we are joined together in a great cause — so honored the British Prime Minister has crossed an ocean to show his unity of purpose with America.  Thank you for coming, friend”. Warm praise, indeed.

It isn’t just George W. Bush who rates Blair so highly; so do an astonishing number of Americans. According to one poll published in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, no fewer than 41% of Americans believed Tony Blair would make a good President of the United States — numbers the majority of Congressmen could only dream of pulling.

But if Tony Blair has managed to be so successful in the United States, why is he so unloved back home? Blair has, it can be argued, been a victim of his own popularity; by riding on a wave of anti-Conservative sentiment in 1997, his landslide victory gave the impression that his premiership would feature a legislative agenda thick with social, economic, and foreign policy reforms. Certainly his party had promised as much, having spend the preceding 18 years in Opposition and arguing against practically everything the Conservatives had championed.

Of course Blair cannot be personally held responsible for the policies adovcated by his predecessors as leader of the Labour party, and a key part of Blair’s agenda was the defining of a “the Third Way” between the laissez-faire market economy of the Conservatives and the tightly regulated, socialist economy historically advocated by the Labour Party. The question is this: did the Thirdy Way really exist, and if it did, was Blair able to mould the Britain into that pattern?

What was the Third Way

Under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, the UK was transformed from being an inefficient, highly regulated mixed economy to a much more efficient, primarily service and tourism oriented on. Traditional industried like manufacturing and textiles have all but died out in the UK for much the same reasons they are dying out in the United States: labour costs are lower in India, China, Mexico, and other ‘developing countries’. Efficiency in an economy is a difficult thing to define, but one important aspect is the ease with which labour can move between industries. In other words, how easy is it to hire and fire people. As traditional industries died off, so did the power of the Unions, and key difference between the UK of 1975 and 2005 is the much smaller role that Trades Unions play in politics and society.

The compensating factor was of course the steady growth in services, particularly financial ones. The London Stock Exchange is one of the biggest in the world. Money coming into London bouys up all kinds of other industries, from food and tourism through to consumer retail and housing. Smaller but just as significant changes have occured across the UK, though not necesarily equitably distributed, so while the South East of England and part of the Midlands and North have done well, much of Scotland and rural England particularly the West Country has done less well. British farms, for example, are very models of efficiency, in part due to somewhat less state support than those in France or Spain, but the downside to that has been a broad depression in the rural economy with many parts of rural England and Scotland having high levels of unemployment.

The Third Way was to combine the freedom and efficiency of the Conservative approach to economics with the social responsibility of the traditional Labour party. Tony Blair advocated an economy where companies were able to prosper but with sufficient checks and balances to ensure that some of their profits were siphoned off to promote infrastructure development in those parts of the UK that had not done well under the Conservatives. While Blair broadly supported Thatcher’s free market economics, her often-quoted remark that “There is no such thing as society” was exactly the kind of thing his Third Way would reject. In American terms, the Third Way is a type of fiscal conservatism with a social responsibility ethic, something along the lines of the Centrism advocated by Bill Clinton.

Did the Third Way work?

The British economy remains solid, and has enjoyed some good times and some less good times throughout the time Blair has been in office. It would be churlish to argue that he might have done better, as many European economies, most notably Germany’s, have singularly failed to do anything like as well during the same timespan. So as far as running the country’s cheque-book goes, Blair has done acceptably well.

But what about the British society? Three issues stand out as having played a central role in the political debate within Britain over the last ten years: the House of Lords, Europe, and the railways. All three had been important sticks with which the Labour party had beaten the Conservatives during the Thatcher and Major years.

Reform of the House of Lords

In modern times at least, the House of Lords consisted of appointed and hereditary peers and acted as a the revising, upper chamber relative to the entirely elected House of Commons. In 1997 Blair announced his intention to remove all the hereditary peers, but for various political reasons ended up having to leave a rump of 92 hereditary peers until the process of reform is completed.

And there’s the catch. The reforms aren’t yet completed. In fact, no-one actually knows what they are going to be, because the government hasn’t published them. Options include an all-appointed House or an all-elected one, or even a combination of the two. An all-appointed House of Lords would obviously be the most democratic, but any such House would diminish the authority of the House of Commons. While you might compare such a bicameral system with, say, the US House and Senate, this ignores the fact that the Commons evolved specifically to be the voice of the people. Conversely, while an all-appointed House of Lords could make sense as an impartial revising chamber less concerned with party politics, this would of course simply swap a bunch of unelected peers who got there through accident of birth with an equally unrepresentitive bunch who obtained their posts through the patronage of whichever political party appointed them.

Europe

Whereas the Conservative party was, and remains, broadly Eurosceptic, the Labour party has always been much more positive about further integration with the European Union. Tony Blair is generally thought to be pro-Europe, but he has satisfied neither critics or advocates of the EU by remaining hesistant about putting issues like joining the Euro front and centre. While most of the major European states have joined the Euro, the UK notably has not, and if the question was put before the British public, it is entirely likely that they would reject joining the Euro.

It would therefore seem probable that Blair is merely biding his time, and hoping to put the poll in the field only when he knows the British are in favour. That time has not come to pass, and Blair’s critics maintain that he has done little to hasten it. When he came to power in 1997, Blair consistently held that joing the Euro was a medium term, if not a short term, issue, but after 9 years of his premiership the Euro question seems as distant as ever.

Railways

For the average American, the idea that public transport would be a political issue is perhaps a strange thought, but in a country with a high population density and towns designed only to accomodate horse and carts, railways play a key role in the nation’s economy. The Conservatives had privatised the railways in a manner that was at best haphazard and at worst unfathomable. Broadly, the Conservatives spun off each part of the railway into a separate company. So on any given train ride, I would be sitting in coaches leased by one company being pulled by a locomotive belong to another. The train service would be provided by a third company, and be running on tracks owned by a fourth. Maintenance of the track and signals would be carried out by a fifth company. The idea was that different companies would compete for each slice of the pie, and the passenger would get a better service while government could reduce its subsidy as private sector efficiencies phased out obsolete working practices.

The reality was very different. Even in the best case scenario, the subsidy the government provides to Britains railways has not been reduced, and according to some analyists has increased substantially, negating any financial advantages. Train ticket prices have escalated well above inflation, and punctuality has gone down, so passengers have generally not been favourable to rail privatisation. Finally, a series of accidents, including one in Hertfordshire where seven people died, highlighted a lack of quality in some of the work done by contractors.

Following the Hatfield railway crash, effectively Blair bought back the privatised Railtrack company that owned and maintained most of the railway infrastructure. There is no indication that the Labour party intends to do anything similar with the other private companies providing Britain’s railway service.

Iraq, and the Special Relationship

While Blair has enjoyed a mixed success rate at home, abroad he has been able to signal out some major political victories. Whether or not the invasion and occupation of Iraq was legal, appropriate, or the right thing to do is the interesting question. For most Americans, the answer is probably yes, but for the majority of Britains, the answer is no. Britain as a country as not particularly threatened by Saddam Hussein, and while the UK has experienced much terrorism over the years, much of that was home grown. The Northern Ireland peace process has unquestionably paid a much greater peace dividend than anything in the Middle East.

On the other hand, Britain’s involvement in Iraq is not an especially fiery issue, and compared with things like railways, health, or education, far less political capital has been expended on the Iraq debate by any of the political parties. In other words, Iraq won’t cost Blair an election. At least, not yet.

Far more damaging to Blair has been the perception that Blair is “Bush’s Poodle”, the idea being that he essentially goes where his master points. Whether or not this is accurate, in politics, appearances are everything, and his willingness to stand closely with Bush on every ocassion has played into his the hands of his critics.

The irony is that politically Blair and Bush couldn’t be more different. Bush is a right winger who plays the religion card heavily and is strongly associated with big business. Blair comes from a socialist background, advocates centrist politics, and operates in a completely secular political environment. Whether or not you support either politician, on a domestic level, they couldn’t be more different. Moreover, while Bush has nothing to lose by making friends with Blair, Blair can only lose support by being too close to someone who, by British standards, is a political extremist.

The argument Blair might make is that what is good for America is good for Britain. To no small degree, Britain’s economy is indeed closely tied to America’s, and American cultural values are perhaps closer to those of the British than, say, French or German ones. By sitting at the top table, Blair raises Britain’s profile and gives the UK influence that it wouldn’t have had it acted only through the European Union or the UN.

The flip side is that without any popular mandate from the British to act in Iraq (or for that matter in Washington), Blair is expending energy on something with few, if any, votes. The more time he is jetting around the world, the argument goes, the less time he has to improve schools, get trains to run on time, or find jobs for the unemployed.

Conclusion?

It is very unlikely Tony Blair will stand as leader of the Labour party in the next election. Many would say that that torch has already been passed on to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown. For Tony, this is end game.

Tony Blair promised a great deal, and had the political mandate to deliver, but one cannot help but feel that Iraq has hijacked everything. Instead of being a great reformer within the UK, he has become a great statesman on the world stage. Peter Riddell’s biography of Blair has as its title “The Unfulfilled Prime Minister: Tony Blair’s Quest for a Legacy” and this perhaps sums his difficult situation up perfectly. Iraq will always be George W. Bush’s baby, and for good or for bad, it will be his legacy. For Blair, the only scorecard that matters is the one for his home games, and there his track record has been too patchy, too hesistant for any resounding plaudits. As he looks back at his tenure he is surely haunted by the things he has failed to achieve. He simply doesn’t have time left to make any differences to the complex problems like education, transport, and social security reform.

From an overwhelming lead over their Conservative rivals, Blair’s party barely maintains parity with them in the most recent opinion polls. His political capital has been spent, and his time is fast running out. The sands of Iraq can claim another victim, the political legacy of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair.