Richards Tony Blair

The Prime Ministers Series
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80075-441-6
Verlag: Swift Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 176 Seiten

Reihe: The Prime Ministers

'One of the shrewdest political commentators we have' Andrew Marr 'Tony Blair was a giant amongst prime ministers and leaders of the Labour party: Steve Richards is a giant amongst political commentators. This riveting and persuasive book describes what happens when they meet head on' Anthony Seldon Was Tony Blair a visionary, impatiently looking ahead, or a leader trapped by his past - Labour's vote-losing 1980s and the dominance of Margaret Thatcher? Was the party's move to the right under Blair necessary in order for them to win, or could they, after 18 years of Tory rule, have afforded to be more daring and more left wing than their leader wished to recognise? In Steve Richards's short, provocative and highly engaging new biography, he argues that Blair was often the opposite of what we remember him being: perceived as a 'moderniser', he sought to strengthen the traditional institutions that partly define the UK, from the monarchy to the military; while to Margaret Thatcher's public appreciation he cemented her economic legacy rather than moved on from it. And, while he was viewed as messianic over Iraq, he was, in fact, being characteristically expedient, clinging to the orthodoxy in which the UK stands shoulder to shoulder with the US in war. But the UK in 2007 was undoubtedly a different country to the one it had been in 1997: from devolution, which played its part in establishing peace in Northern Ireland, to civil partnerships and a revived NHS, Blair left Britain in a much better place. While his legacy has been overshadowed by the Iraq war, Tony Blair re-establishes a more rounded view of his time in office, and shows that the challenges facing Blair were the ones that still face Labour today.

Steve Richards is a political columnist, journalist, author and presenter. He regularly presents The Week in Westminster on BBC Radio 4 and has presented BBC programmes on Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn. He is the author of The Prime Ministers, Turning Points and The Prime Ministers We Never Had, the latter of which was named a 'Book of the Year' in the Guardian and The Times. He writes for several national newspapers including the Guardian, the Independent and the Financial Times. He also presents a popular political one-man show each year at the Edinburgh Festival and across the UK.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Richards, Steve

Leseproben

Chapter 2

Power

Labour’s victory in the 1997 election was dazzling. Here was a party that had lost four elections in a row not only winning but doing so spectacularly. Tony Blair’s majority of 179 exceeded Clement Attlee’s in 1945 and Harold Wilson’s in 1966, both big wins for Labour. Only Keir Starmer came close to such a landslide in 2024, partly by copying Blair’s path to victory. Blair had achieved what he had set out to do, forming an election-winning coalition of voters from across the political spectrum: traditional Labour voters, those who had previously voted Conservative, business leaders, trade unionists, the young and old, north and south, Sun and Guardian readers. There was a tangible excitement on the night of the election and in the days that followed that was almost without parallel in modern British politics.

In the early hours of the Friday morning Labour’s ecstatic formal celebrations took place at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank. ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ by the pop group D:Ream, Labour’s anthem during the campaign, blasted out of the speakers close to the dance floor. Senior party figures, journalists and anyone else who could get hold of an invitation danced excitedly. Around the country there were celebratory parties overnight or across the sunny weekend that followed. Blair arrived shortly after five in the morning from his constituency in Sedgefield and was greeted like a rock star. The sun was rising as he spoke and, always alert to the drama being played out, declared: ‘A new dawn has broken.’ So used to losing elections, the crowd went wild in response to a political metaphor extracted from the sun appearing above the Thames.

Yet even on the night of an unqualified electoral triumph there were complexities, layers of ambiguity. In his memoir Blair revealed that he regretted almost immediately uttering such uplifting words to open the new era. For all his instinctive evangelical flair, he did not want voters to expect too much from a government unused to power and determined to retain the range of support that had propelled it to its spectacular victory. Following the reference to a new dawn, Blair moved down a gear. He insisted: ‘We were elected as New Labour and we will govern as New Labour.’ He repeated those words outside Number 10 later that morning, before entering the Prime Ministerial building for the first time. From day one he was determined to reassure those who had previously voted Conservative that this would be a new project in government as well as in opposition. At the same time, he was warning those who were eagerly anticipating a leap to the left now that they had safely won to forget about such dreams. This was going to be different.

Even the dancers at the Festival Hall could not quite cope with the new political situation, including those who had been directly involved in the transformation. For some reason I ended up on the dance floor opposite Blair’s senior adviser David Miliband. As we were gyrating awkwardly, he said to me, as ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ blared in the background: ‘I’m sure we’ll wake up in the morning to find the Tories have won again.’ On the first page of his memoir, Blair reveals that, as he entered Number 10 for the first time, his ‘predominant feeling was fear, and of a sort unlike anything I had felt before’. Such an emotion was unsurprising. He was 43 and had never been in power before in any capacity, and the country could barely contain its excitement that change was on its way.

There was complex ambiguity even about what it was that voters were celebrating. Was it the arrival of what they hoped would be a change-making Labour government under the youthful Blair, or was it the end of 18 years of Tory rule? One of the first books to be published after the election, Brian Cathcart’s Were You Still Up for Portillo?, contained in its mischievous title a reference to the unexpected defeat of Michael Portillo, then the most prominent cabinet minister on the right of his party. The title captured a delight in the fall of the Conservatives, but there was hope too that Labour would bring about change. As one of Blair’s senior advisers, Philip Gould, observed later, the manifesto was cautiously incremental but the election result marked such a break with the past that it created an assumption that sweeping change would follow in terms of policies.

Blair might have felt fear but he had a developed sense of how he wanted to lead. He was elected as New Labour and he would govern as New Labour. What did he mean by this? In terms of an ideological guide Blair spoke of a ‘third way’, navigating between Thatcherism and traditional Labour policies. President Clinton was the original inspiration behind this idea and joined Blair for seminars on its significance. This was a vague philosophy, an anti-ideological ideology. The nearest equivalent in the UK had been Harold Macmillan’s The Middle Way, published in 1938. Although Macmillan was a Conservative who went on to become Prime Minister, his view of the middle way was in some respects to the left of Blair’s version, showing a greater faith in the role of the state to address inequalities, poor housing and, to some extent, public services. Blair saw his third way as a means of marking a break from Labour’s past while being more alert to the need for decent public services than the Tories to his right. The philosophy was conveniently flexible, and Blair remained a devotee, even attempting a third way in the build-up to the war in Iraq. This attachment was one of the many differences between him and Gordon Brown. As Chancellor and Prime Minister Brown never once referred to the third way.

The caution that shaped Blair’s pitch at the election continued in government. In the early days of the first term, he told colleagues that the campaign to win the next election had already begun. He intended to do nothing that jeopardised what became known as his ‘big tent’ of support. He wanted to be the first Labour Prime Minister to win at least two full terms with big majorities. He had every intention of keeping The Sun newspaper on board and hoped to secure the approval of others, including the Daily Mail. As one cabinet minister noted privately as the ‘first hundred days’ came to a conclusion: ‘We hit the ground reviewing,’ with quite a few thorny policy decisions being kicked into the long grass.

Yet within Blair’s willingly chosen constraints there was a sense of early hyperactivity. He summarised the carefully planned early initiatives in his memoir. They included, in order of announcements: the abolition of state-funded assistance for private schools, a new Department for International Development, the granting of independence of the Bank of England, the introduction of a new half-hour, weekly slot for Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons (replacing two 15-minute slots), compensation for Gulf War veterans, a reform that enabled National Lottery proceeds to be spent on health and education, a cut on VAT on fuel to 5 per cent, a restoration of trade union rights at GCHQ, bills for referendums on a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly, legislation for a London mayor, signing up to the ‘Social Chapter’ of the Maastricht Treaty, the launch of a Low Pay Commission to agree on a minimum wage, a new welfare-to-work programme, and quite a lot more.

Some of these policies were much bigger than others. The independence of the Bank of England was a substantial act of reassurance, Brown giving up his powers to set interest rates in order to free himself of the burden of fears that the markets would strike him down. Labour governments elected with big majorities in 1945 and 1966 never recovered from the trauma of being forced to devalue the pound. By making the bank responsible for monetary policy, Brown triggered a sense in the markets and the media that this would be a ‘prudent’ government, turning away from levers that might lead to short-term gains while making the economy more vulnerable. Blair was fully behind the move and at times claimed to have instigated the major reform. In truth, Brown’s senior adviser Ed Balls had been working on the details in opposition and had advocated the change in a pamphlet published by the Fabian Society shortly before he joined Brown’s team. Even so, they had to move quickly. Brown only decided on the step shortly before the election.

The architecture around the bank’s independence had been carefully thought through, an example of hard graft behind the scenes in opposition paying off once the election had been won. The elected Chancellor still retained influence, appointing the governor of the bank and members of the Monetary Policy Committee. Brown also set the bank’s inflation target, instructing the new masters of monetary policy that inflation should not go above or below 2 per cent. Privately Balls stressed the importance of not going below this amount as much as he did the more obvious objective of avoiding inflation taking off.

The bank’s independence was to have many consequences, one of which was to change Brown’s views about joining the euro. At times in opposition, Brown had been more enthusiastic than Blair about at least leaving open the option of signing up to the single currency. He was worried that the referendum would be an impossible barrier. As a Shadow Chancellor and with an acute awareness of Labour’s history in government, he knew that Chancellors can be fatally destabilised by humiliating devaluations of the pound. Being part of the single currency would remove the threat of sterling being...