BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007
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and Control (Polity, 2007). He was President of the British Society of
Criminology from 1993 to 1996.
Rob Rhodes is Director of the Research School of Social Sciences and
Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the Australian National
University. His recent books include The Oxford Handbook of Political
Institutions (joint editor, 2006), and Governance Stories (with Mark Bevir,
2006).
Anthony Seldon is Master at Wellington College. He edits and writes in
his spare time.
Peter Sinclair is Professor of Economics at the University of Birmingham.
He has held visiting professorships at the University of British Columbia ,
Queen’s (Ontario) and Witwatersrand. His previous posts include
Director of the Centre for Central Banking Studies at the Bank of England,
and Fellow and Tutor in Economics at Brasenose College, Oxford. Much
of his research is devoted to policy issues in international, monetary and
taxation economics.
Alan Smithers is the Professor of Education and Director of the Centre for
Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham.
He has previously held chairs at the University of Liverpool, Brunel
University and the University of Manchester. Throughout Blair’s tenure he
has been special adviser to the Commons Education Select Committee.
Sarah Spencer, CBE, is Associate Director of the Centre on Migration,
Policy and Society at the University of Oxford and a Visiting Professor at
the Human Rights Centre, University of Essex. She is Chair of the Equality
and Diversity Forum and a former Deputy Chair of the Commission for
Racial Equality. Her books include The Politics of Migration: Managing
Opportunity, Conflict and Change (2003).
Philip Stephens is Associate Editor of the Financial Times and a senior
political and international affairs commentator. He is a well-known
author, commentator and broadcaster. He is the author of Politics and the
Pound (Macmillan), a study of the British government’s exchange rate
management and its relations with Europe since 1979, and of Tony Blair
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(Viking/Politico’s), a biography of the British Prime Minister. He is a
Fulbright Fellow and winner of the 2002 David Watt Prize for outstanding
political journalism. He was named in 2005 as Political Journalist of the
Year by the Political Studies Association. He is a governor of the Ditchley
Foundation and Treasurer of the Franco-British Colloque.
Kitty Stewart is Research Fellow at the Centre for Analysis of Social
Exclusion (CASE) at the London School of Economics and Political
Science. Her current research interests include child poverty, international
comparisons of policy and outcomes relating to poverty and inequality,
and employment trajectories for low-skilled workers. She is the co-editor,
with John Hills, of A More Equal Society? New Labour, Poverty, Inequality
and Exclusion (2005).
Robert Taylor is a research associate at the Centre for Economic
Performance at the London School of Economics and Political Science
and Associate Visitor at Nuffield College, Oxford. Former employment
editor of the Financial Times and labour editor of The Observer, he has
written four books on trade unions and labour markets. He is writing a
history of the parliamentary Labour Party.
Tony Travers is Director of LSE London at the London School of
Economics. He is Expenditure Adviser to the House of Commons
Education and Skills Committee and has also advised other parliamentary
committees. He was a member of the Audit Commission from 1992 to
1997 and an Associate of the Kings Fund. He has published a number of
books and articles about local government and cities, including The
Politics of London: Governing an Ungovernable City.
P R E FAC E
This is the fifth volume in the series which analyses the impact of British
contemporary government. The earlier volumes, often co-edited with
Dennis Kavanagh, The Thatcher Effect, The Major Effect, The Blair Effect
1997–2001 and The Blair Effect 2001–05, were published in 1989, 1994,
2001 and 2005, respectively. The focus of enquiry has remained always
the same. What difference does a prime minister make across the waterfront of policy and government? The books were inspired by the Institute
(now Centre) of Contemporary British History, founded in 1986.
The formula in all five volumes has not changed. Leading authorities
from academe and the commentariat were asked to address common
themes in their own specialist area:
• What was the state of your area when Labour took office in May 1997?
• What was the state of the area in June 2007, when Tony Blair left office?
• What changed and why?
• How successful or effective have the changes been?
• Where relevant, why was more not achieved?
• To what extent was change driven by the Prime Minister himself, by
No. 10 in general, by Gordon Brown, by other ministers, departments,
think-tanks, or by any other factors?
• What has been the net ‘Blair effect’ in your area between 1994/7 and
2007?
• To what extent did policy mark a departure from traditional Labour
(and Thatcher/Major) policy?
• Finally, how enduring might those changes prove?
Authors were presented with these questions and asked to address them,
while also being encouraged to develop distinctive approaches of their
own. With such a diverse team of individuals, it is unsurprising that some
interpreted their brief more loosely, while others saw the questions
almost as a series of short essay titles to be addressed sequentially. The
timeframe was the bookends of Blair’s government, since his election in
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xviii
May 1997 until his departure in June 2007, while also taking heed of what
he had done as party leader from July 1994 onwards. Several new chapter
subjects were added to this volume, including development (covering
international poverty and Africa) and climate change, neither of which
featured prominently for Blair in his first two terms. Two authors, Tim
Garton Ash and Philip Stephens, offer short commentaries at the end of
the book, and I write a brief concluding essay looking at Blair’s personal
achievement and why it came so late in his premiership.
Books in this series aim to be scrupulously non-party political. Where
individual authors have particular political persuasions, I sought to
balance them by others with alternative outlooks. It is hard to achieve a
clear perspective on governments on the cusp of their ending. The challenge is heightened, but made much more rewarding, if they were unpopular and controversial, as was the case with the Blair government, above
all for taking Britain into a highly unpopular and contentious war. The
task was all the more fascinating, and necessary, when the principal political resistance came not from the opposition parties, but from the Prime
Minister’s own party.
This book aims to achieve a balanced perspective not only on the man
/>
but also his government. As such, the hope is that it will not only be interesting in 2007 and 2008, but also in 2017 and 2032, on the twenty-fifth
anniversary of Blair’s departure. Experience shows that judgements of
contemporary history can be of enduring value, not only for describing
how a government looked at the time, but also long after. All history is
contemporary history, because every new generation judges the past
afresh.
Finally, I would like to thank the authors for being so punctilious and
pleasant to work with, to Julia Harris for being such an outstanding
editor’s assistant, for John Haslam, Liz Davey and the team at Cambridge
University Press for making the book’s production a pleasure, to my Blair
biography team, Peter Snowdon, Daniel Collings, Rob McNamara, and
Susanna Sharpe for excellent back-up and particularly to Kunal Khatri
for bringing the book together in the final stages, to Tom Lowe for final
checking, to Dennis Kavanagh to whom I dedicate this book, and finally
to my colleagues and governors at Wellington College for being so understanding and stimulating throughout.
PA RT I
Politics and government
1
The Blair premiership
There is no doubt that Tony Blair has been a considerable figure in British
and Labour party politics. He led Labour to three successive general election
victories and is the party’s greatest election winner. His governments form
one of three successful progressive administrations since 1906. He has been
a successful Prime Minster, who has set a new path for the public services
and leaves Britain a better place than he found it in 1997.
But beyond those accomplishments, how considerable a figure he was
and whether he could have left a larger mark are still unresolved questions, and this after more than a dozen biographies and hundreds of
essays and articles. The interest has been and continues to be remarkable.
Of prime ministers over the last century only Lloyd George, Churchill
and Thatcher have commanded such attention. In that respect at least
Blair is in the top rank.
To disappoint was probably always going to be Blair’s fate, no matter
how successful he was. In 1997 the opportunities seemed so immense. Of
all the post-war new governments (1945, 1951, 1964, 1970, 1974 and 1979)
none was as fortunate as Labour in 1997. Virtually all were hampered
from the outset by a weak economy and/or a narrow or non-existent
majority in parliament. But in 1997 Tony Blair was blessed with a strong
economy and a large majority in the House of Commons. The Labour
Party and the cabinet were gratified that their hunger for office had at
long last been satisfied and many attributed it to Blair’s strong leadership.
Brussels and the EU capitals looked forward to the young dynamic Prime
Minister who would at long last positively engage with the EU. Blair also
had good relations with the US President. For the first time in a general
election Labour had been backed by a majority of the national newspapers. And the Conservative opposition was exhausted, divided and discredited. The bar for evaluation was set high.
A second reason for inevitable disappointment was the exaggerated
sense of excitement and expectation in May 1997. Some of this was whipped
up by the incontinent rhetoric of Blair and his colleagues and some by an
uncritical media. But none of the advantages mentioned above render such
challenges as, say, family breakdown, declining economic competitiveness
or climate change, any easier to tackle.
Harold Wilson in 1964 was the last Prime Minister to enter office after
his party had been out of power for thirteen years and amid great expectations. He had also promised to build a ‘new Britain’, spoke of ‘modernisation’, and planned to make No. 10 ‘a powerhouse’. It was not a
comforting precedent.
I
What did Blair find when he entered office? First, the reputation of the
premiership was at one of its low periods. John Major, beset by a tiny and
unreliable majority, and badly damaged by the experience of British
membership of the ERM and attacks by his predecessor and much of the
Conservative press, lacked authority. Blair taunted him at the despatch
box in 1995: ‘I lead my party – he follows his.’ Much of his electoral
appeal lay in his promise of strong leadership and willingness to challenge
his party. Major was very much a negative model for Blair.
But from 1994 when he became party leader he was also reacting to
previous Labour prime ministers. He noted (or was told) that Harold
Wilson and James Callaghan had to balance cabinet appointments
between left and right in the interest of party unity, that they were forced
to negotiate with the NEC and the trades unions over key policies and
that a new Labour prime minister had to appoint to cabinet members of
the shadow cabinet elected by MPs. Labour leaders were constrained by
the party’s constitution and ethos, both shaped when Labour was a minor
party with little prospect of ever forming a government. There was a
certain immobilism about Labour in the 1970s ( Blair joined the party in
1975) and 1980s. A number of policies were simply ‘unthinkable’ for a
Labour leader, including rewriting Clause 4 of the party constitution,
which committed the party to widespread public ownership.
Labour rode the public mood for change on many fronts in 1997. There
was widespread agreement on the need for constitutional reform, more
investment in and reform of the core public services and investment in
the country’s infrastructure, improving Britain’s poor relations with
Europe (although this did not involve a wish for more integration) and
ending the sleaze associated with the outgoing Conservative government.
But, in other respects, notably economic management, there was no great
call for change. Overall, voters concluded that the Conservatives after
eighteen years in office had outstayed their welcome and thought it was
time to give Labour a chance. Blair offered change but with reassurance.
Other chapters in the book examine the extent to which Blair ended in
credit on the above.
Not everything started with Blair. He inherited most of his constitutional programme from the previous Labour leader John Smith. Indeed,
Andrew Gamble has argued that the programme was less a new agenda
than the completion of an agenda dating back a hundred years. His
achievement in bringing peace and a semblance of ‘normal politics’ to
Northern Ireland built on the work begun by John Major. Gordon
Brown’s successful low-inflation policies continued the approach of the
previous government; Peter Riddell suggested that an economist from
Mars ‘would conclude that the same government had been in charge
throughout the second half of the 1990s’.
There is a certain shape and character to Blair’s three terms of office.
He has expressed disappointme
nt with the first 1997–2001 term. This was
when his political capital was at his highest but by 2001 he had little to
show for it, beyond preparing for and winning a second term. The public
service reform agenda hardly existed, certainly in the form of increasing
choice and diversity. The Conservatives’ health service internal market
and city technology colleges were scrapped, before being effectively recreated in the second and third terms with different names – adversary
politics at its worst. There were many ‘headline-catching initiatives’ and
No. 10 and ministers acquired a reputation for putting presentation
before substance. In the first twelve months ministers created nearly 200
task forces, inquiries and Royal Commissions; most proved to be substitutes for action.
Blair planned for the second term to be about ‘delivery’ of the reforms
and improvements in public services. Instead he was thrown off course
by the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers and the consequent war on terror,
Iraq, and a running battle with Gordon Brown over the succession and
policy. He reached a stage when he thought about standing down in
2002 and eventually promised in September 2004 that, if elected again
at the 2005 general election, he would not serve beyond a third term.
Lack of progress in Iraq and controversy over whether Blair had lied or
misused the intelligence to make the case for war was deeply damaging
to him personally and politically. He continued to struggle with reform
but with depleted political capital and facing increasingly rebellious
Labour MPs.
In the third term an attempted coup by Labour MPs in September 2006
confirmed in his own mind a decision he had already made in May of that
year to go in the summer of 2007. But he pressed on with reforms of pensions, energy, disability benefits, criminal justice, and trust schools
(relying on the support of Conservative MPs). At the end there was a
smooth and orderly handover to Gordon Brown and the Labour left had
been so marginalised in parliament that it could not raise the forty-two
MPs necessary to nominate a candidate to force a leadership election.
Blair speaks with pride of his record over ten years in office and
expresses confidence that the ideas of New Labour are now accepted