Tony Blair is the great mystery man of British politics. “Is,”
not “was”: for we have not heard the last of him
yet. Outwardly smiling, open, frank, and uncomplicated, he is
inwardly complex and unfathomable.
His recently published memoir, A Journey, was attacked
on all sides long before publication, and its contents gutted in
newspaper reports. His decision to give all the profits to military
charities was widely condemned as “hypocritical” and “humbug.” A
London signing session had to be canceled because of terrorist
threats. Yet booksellers reported nearly 100,000 copies bought on
the day it finally became available.
Blair has, in his day, exercised a popular appeal with few
parallels, in Britain or elsewhere. In 1997, never having held
office of any kind, he won an unprecedented electoral victory, with
a majority of 179 over all the other parties combined. This
involved the capture of many Tory seats hitherto regarded as
impregnable. He was able to repeat this huge success twice,
something no previous Labour prime minis- ter had been able to do
even once.
Indeed it is widely believed that if Blair had not generously
made way for his disloyal and much-disliked deputy, Gordon Brown,
he would have won a fourth election earlier this year. As it was,
Brown squandered Labour’s massive majority and has now vanished
into total obscurity, making way for a coalition of Tories and
Liberals.
Blair’s popular appeal rested on a combination of two
characteristics. First is a total absence of ideological and party
commitment, and the sectarian bitterness that goes with it. There
is no doubt that the British public now hates party politics and
professional party politicians. The basis of Blair’s attraction was
that he appeared to be above party.
How he became a Labour politician is a mystery. His father was
the son of a Glasgow shipyard worker, who made his way upward
through service in the wartime army. He entered it a private and
emerged a major. Then in the post-war he became a lawyer and a Tory
enthusiast. In 1964 he was about to be adopted as the candidate for
a safe Tory seat when a stroke ended his political hopes. If Blair
senior had entered Parliament as a Conservative MP there is no
doubt whatever that Blair junior would have followed him.
As it was his father sent him to a famous private school,
Fettes, because it was “the best school in Scotland.” There Blair
came under the influence of an outstanding teacher, Eric Anderson
(later provost of Eton), and his wife, Poppy. Always a superb
schoolboy actor, Blair was selected by the Andersons to play the
part of Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar when still a
junior boy. Poppy, who did the costumes, dressed Brutus and his
followers in blue, and Antony and his followers in red. “And that,”
she relates with glee, “is why Tony became Labour.”
Certainly Blair seems entirely at home with basic Conservative
principles, such as collective security, the “special relationship”
with the United States, the rule of law and the need to enforce it
strictly, both at home and internationally. He was a great admirer
of Margaret Thatcher, and if he had been a Tory instead of Labour
would have been her natural successor.
Blair had, and has, precisely the combination of qualities that
has enabled candidates to flourish in U.S. presidential elections
— that is, an absence of sectarian party baggage and superb
presentational skills, together with the widest possible appeal. He
is, by his nature, a national, not a party, politician. This is his
second key characteristic.
BLAIR’S PRO-AMERICANISM ran through all his years of office as
Britain’s prime minister. He not only got on well with both Bill
Clinton and George W. Bush, but also liked and admired them. He
envied and sought to emulate Clinton’s “extraordinary rapport with
ordinary people.” He adds in his memoir: “We were less dissimilar
than people often thought, but as a political class act, I deferred
to the master. He had it all. His superb intellect was often hidden
by his manner, but he had incredible analytical ability, was
genuinely interested in policy debate — possibly, occasionally,
too much so — and constantly on the lookout for new ideas.”
He liked and admired Bush for quite different reasons: “George
had immense simplicity in how he saw the world. Right or wrong, it
led to decisive leadership.” When they first met, “it was obvious
he was a world away from Bill Clinton. But he was also tough and
clear and knew exactly what he wanted.” He was frank, too. Blair
tells a pointed story about Bush at a G8 summit:
George had arrived bang on time…and had not fully said hello
to all the participants. He did not know or recognise Guy
Verhofstadt, whose advice he listened to with considerable
astonishment.
He then turned to me and whispered, “Who is this guy?”
“He is the Prime Minister of Belgium,” I said.
“Belgium?” George said, clearly aghast at the possible full
extent of his stupidity. “Belgium is not part of the G8.”
“No,” I said, “But he is here as the President of Europe.”
“You got the Belgians running Europe?” He shook his head, now
aghast at our stupidity.
Blair was tremendously impressed by Bush’s willingness to take
difficult decisions and stick to them. Each man got to admire the
other wholeheartedly, and so long as the Bush-Blair axis held,
there was nothing unsure and hesitant about the leadership of the
West, and the policies followed.
By contrast, Blair is clearly puzzled by Barack Obama, though he
will not admit it. There is a paragraph toward the end of his
memoir which completely baffled me:
The genius of Barack Obama was precisely that he reached out and
over the partisan divisions. He did so explicitly. The desire of
some of his present-day critics to drag him back from the centre is
absurd. The espousal of centrist politics is not a betrayal. It is
what he promised.
I have read this paragraph forward and backward, sideways and
upside down. Whatever way, it makes no sense. I think even Blair
would have found it hard to work with Obama, not so much because
Obama is anti-British — though he is, fundamentally so — but
because he is also, albeit less obviously, anti-American. And Blair
is pro-American, to a fault.
WHEN BLAIR ALLOWED HIMSELF to be pushed out by the Gordon Brown
faction he was only in his mid-fifties. He is still a mere 57.
The only comparable example, in British history, of an
outstanding politician being retired so young is that of Lloyd
George, the victor in World War I, who was pushed out in 1922 at
the age of 58, and never came back to power. This waste of talent,
indeed genius, during the meager inter-war years is one of the most
tragic stories in modern British history. I am not suggesting that
Blair is a leader in the Lloyd George class. Far from it. But he is
a valuable figure nonetheless, not just in a narrow British context
but in the wider picture of Anglo-American relations and the
leadership of the West. It is desirable that we should make full
use of his qualities: friendliness, absence of party rancor, wide
popular appeal, open-minded tolerance, and not least courage.
Happily Blair has not made the mistake of making himself
ineligible for a return to active politics by going into the
impotence of the House of Lords or the Brussels bureaucracy. He can
respond to a summons or an opportunity. Britain seems to be
entering an era of coalitions, turning its back on the strict
dualism of monolithic parties, and pushing men of all parties
toward the center. This is a good climate to give birth to a Second
Spring for Blair.
Both Labour and the Liberals will probably split in the near
future. Blair is well placed to take over the leadership of a
merger of the responsible rumps of both. And this could be the
prelude to his assuming the leadership of a much wider merger with
the Tories. His temperament, his views, his commitments (including
the lack of them), and his enviable capacity to get himself liked
all point in this direction. So does his book, if you read between
the lines. A Blair revival, it is true, does not fit in with a
continued Obama presence in the White House. But nor does any other
good news for the West.
