Think back to the summer of 1992: Labour's fourth election defeat in a row; Major triumphant; hints of more mad, half-baked schemes for education and health from Tory think-tanks; no hope that the unemployed and the working poor could ever again make their voices heard. Who could have dreamed then that, in less than a decade, a Labour Chancellor could announce a £43bn increase in public spending, with 20 per cent a year more for transport, more than 6 per cent extra for health and education? Who could have suspected that Gordon Brown would realise the aspiration of all his Labour predecessors: to finance a centre-left programme largely out of economic growth? Who could have thought that he would do so after three years without the slightest hint of a financial or economic crisis, without any bother from the gnomes of Zurich or bankers' ramps, or other mysterious forces of international capitalism that were always thought certain to undermine a Labour government? Who would have predicted that Labour would enjoy an uninterrupted opinion poll lead for more than eight years?
And who could have imagined that the only real threat to a second Labour term would be the man credited with restoring the party's electability in the first place? All Labour has to do is keep its nerve. Tony Blair appears dangerously close to losing his. It is sheer bad luck that private memos, written in the spring, should now be leaked to the Sun and the Times. But they merely provide further evidence of what has long been apparent: that here is a man almost pathologically obsessed with message. "We should think now of an initiative, eg, locking up street muggers. Something tough, with immediate bite . . . this should be done soon . . ." This passage from Mr Blair's memo - with its disagreeable marriage of PR-speak and saloon-bar rant - is far more damaging to the Prime Minister than anything the Folletts and Fields have thrown at him.
Mr Blair's trouble is that he thinks both too large and too small, too long-term and too short-term. He fears, on the one hand, losing control of the news agenda even for a day. Whatever the latest headline - a Glenn Hoddle indiscretion, a Tony Martin conviction, a Charleroi riot - the government must take a view. It therefore strays into territory that is either none of its business or traditional Tory land, where Labour is doomed, like a swotty schoolboy trying to be one of the lads, to imitate the outrageous agenda of the Daily Mail, whose main editorial spread last Wednesday morning was devoted to the merits of castration and hanging. Mr Blair has apparently swallowed the idea, put about by President Clinton's former adviser Dick Morris and endorsed by Mr Blair's own consultant Philip Gould, that leaders now need "a daily mandate" from a newly volatile electorate. In Britain at least, there is no evidence for this whatever, although it is easy to see why Mr Gould, who makes his living from focus groups, should want Mr Blair to believe that there is.
Yet Mr Blair also has ambitions to set the nation's course for the next century, in which some coalition of well-meaning, decent, progressive chaps like himself will lead us into a land of good intentions, happy families and new buildings designed by Lord Rogers. This "big tent" is so central to Mr Blair's vision that a Tory recovery on any scale in the next election, even if it left Labour with a perfectly adequate working majority, would be to him a defeat. That is why Mr Gould, in the latest leaked memo, describes a projected general election victory margin of 5 percentage points (which translates into a majority of 91 seats, according to the MORI model) as "too close for comfort".
Mr Blair is not really Labour at all, or even a Liberal. He is just anti-Tory, and then only in the sense that he doesn't like Tory traditions, snobberies, country pursuits, stuffed shirts and blue rinses. This is an electoral asset given that it has long been apparent that the country has a natural anti-Tory majority but not a natural pro-Labour one. But it makes him a nervy, fidgety prime minister who lacks the steadiness that would derive from a sense of his ultimate social and economic objectives.
Another prime minister might reflect that, even if defeated, his government had achieved much - the minimum wage, for example, or devolution. To Mr Blair, however, a second decisive election victory was always the core objective. Only by striving for that victory too hard can he possibly lose it.
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
