Missing Blair

“Blair’s relationship with Brown damaged the effectiveness of the government. At the pinnacle of politics, a constructive relationship with a colleague who covets your position is impossible”

Second Reading
Fr Kevin Hegarty

Daniel Finkelstein, a political commentator with the London ‘Times’ was right. He claimed last year that the British Labour Party would soon regret the departure of Tony Blair as leader.
Under the leaden leadership of Gordon Brown, the party is floundering. In the opinion polls, the Tories have opened up a double-digit lead over Labour. It is much too early to predict that this spells the end of Labour rule at the next election, but the omens for the party are not good. A devastating piece of poetic doggerel, now circulating throughout Westminster, sums up Brown’s predicament:

“At Downing Street, upon the stair
I met a man who was not Blair,
He was not Blair again today,
How I wish that man would go away.”
Tony Blair is the most successful leader in the history of the British Labour party. He led them to three consecutive general election victories, two of them by landslide margins. A quarter of a century ago, the party was in the doldrums, possibly facing extinction, because of the extremity of its socialist policies. In the 1983 general election, under the leadership of the other worldly intellectual socialist, Michael Foot, it produced a manifesto that has been described as the longest suicide note in political history.
Blair was one of the few new Labour members of Parliament elected that year. He and Gordon Brown became the public faces of New Labour. They dedicated themselves to renewing the party and creating policies that resonated with contemporary Britain. Within a decade-and-a-half they helped bring Labour from the edge of oblivion to being the natural party of government in Britain.
Gordon Brown was the intellectual powerhouse of the partnership. Blair had charisma, innate dignity and marvellous presentational skills. He made the political weather.
It is much too early to write definitively of his contribution as Prime Minister. There were significant advances in education and health reform, though given the extent of Labour’s control of the House of Commons, these could have been greater. There was too much emphasis on political spin to the detriment of legislative substance.
Britain, under his leadership, played a more positive role in the European Union, though the continuance of the corrosive little Englander mentality, prevented his government from embracing the Euro currency. For many of his supporters his enthusiastic support of George Bush’s foray into Iraq was unacceptable and undermined his political authority.
His relationship with Gordon Brown, once friendly, then uneasy and finally poisonous, damaged the effectiveness of the government. At the pinnacle of politics, a constructive relationship with a colleague who covets your position is probably impossible.
I believe that his pivotal role in the achievement of a political settlement in Northern Ireland may be the most important legacy of his premiership. In the recent spate of tributes to Bertie Ahern, on his announcement of his imminent resignation, there has been considerable emphasis on the Taoiseach’s role in this achievement. Rightly so, but Ahern was lucky. Of course, there is nothing wrong with being so favoured. Napoleon once said that he preferred his generals to be lucky than talented!
Ahern was lucky that his time in office coincided with that of a British Prime Minister whose passion for a settlement of the Northern Ireland question coincided with his. William Ewart Gladstone, a politician with whom Blair has similarities in terms of moral rhetoric, on becoming Prime Minister in 1868, proclaimed that his mission was to pacify Ireland. Blair, though he eschewed such grandiose phraseology, had a similar commitment to creating permanent peace in the North.
Since the troubles began in the North in the late sixties, British political leaders reacted often with a mixture of helplessness, nihilism and disdain.
An anecdote sums it up. Reginald Maudling, on becoming Home Secretary in the summer of 1970, visited Belfast where he met Unionist and Nationalist politicians and listened to their grievances. Depressed by the experience, on the plane journey back to London, he turned to his private secretary and said: “Oh what a bloody awful country. Bring me a double whiskey.”
Compared to his recent predecessors in office, Blair devoted an enormous amount of time and creative energy to Northern Ireland over the ten years of his premiership. Edward Heath told Jack Lynch that Northern Ireland was none of his business, though he later recanted from this position. When the Ulster Workers’ strike caused the collapse of the first power-sharing executive in 1974, Harold Wilson wearied of the problem. He managed the unusual feat of insulting both Unionists and Nationalists by implying that the people of Northern Ireland were spongers on the British Exchequer. James Callaghan was a prisoner of the Unionists because his minority government depended on their votes for its survival.
Margaret Thatcher was, at first, beguiled by Charles Haughey’s assertion that political leaders were remembered for solving seemingly intractable problems rather than balancing the economic books. She was also charmed by his gift of a Georgian silver teapot but soon came to distrust him and remained at heart an inveterate Unionist. John Major had some of Blair’s passion for a solution to the Northern Ireland question but his years in office were dogged by internal party divisions which limited his freedom of manoeuvre.
Blair’s commitment to Northern Ireland was an act of statesmanship that strengthens one’s faith in the wonder of political democracy. His involvement offered him no electoral gain as the overall British electorate has little interest in the North. His Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell, has just published a book, ‘Great Hatred, Little Room’, that outlines in relentless detail the extent of his involvement and the measure of his achievement. For anyone interested in one of the most significant achievements in the political world in the last decade, it is an essential read.
By the way, the book has a photograph taken last May of Blair, Ahern, Peter Hain, Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley. By the end of this May, only McGuinness will be involved in mainstream politics. A week may be a long time in politics; a year can seem like an eternity.