BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007
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across the main political parties. But he might reflect that he could have
done more if: (a) his relationship with his Chancellor had been more harmonious or if the latter had been willing to defer to his authority; (b) if he
(alone among leaders of social democratic parties) had not allied himself
so closely over the war on terror and Iraq with President Bush and his
neo-conservative team; and (c) been bolder in his reform of public services much earlier.
II
Blair’s ideas about the premiership were shaped more positively by his
experience as Leader of the Opposition. His leadership as Prime Minister
was marked by:
a. a stronger political direction from No. 10, substantially increasing the
size and influence of the political office, policy unit and press office.
The number of political appointees in No. 10 grew from 8 to 28.
b. new units, focusing on policy innovation and implementation, such as
the delivery unit and strategy unit, and an expanded Cabinet Office.
The Cabinet Office focused more on driving through No. 10’s agenda
and less on acting as a broker between departments and overseeing the
smooth working of the cabinet system. A senior No. 10 figure said to
the author in 1998: ‘We want the Cabinet Secretary [then Sir Richard
Wilson] to be our chief whip in Whitehall.’
c. a larger and much stronger media apparatus, eventually leading to the
creation of a Strategic Communications Unit and Research and
Intelligence Unit to complement the Press Office. To cope with the 24/7
media, the communications team was more political and proactive
than hitherto. Blair attributed New Labour’s success as a campaigning
operation in large part to the effectiveness of its communications arm.
d. listening to voters rather than the party. As in opposition he relied on
the views of the median voter (obviously to the political right of
Labour trade union activists and the annual party conference). He
used focus groups and opinion polls, rather than party institutions, to
keep him in touch with the ‘centre ground’.
As leader Blair in part built on existing trends and in part responded to
changing circumstances, a mix of pressures and opportunities. Richard
Rose1 argues that he has fashioned a new-style premiership. The features
include: working with circles of confidants and advisers in No. 10, regarding cabinet and formal meetings as often unproductive; spending less
time in the House of Commons; taking more time to manage the media
and appear live on television. Blair’s scant regard for cabinet in the first
term was shown by the brevity of meetings. The importance he attached
to parliament is reflected in how little time he spent there, although that
continued a trend among prime ministers over recent decades.
Over time Blair has learnt the limits of prime ministerial leadership.
Academic analysis now shares with business models less interest in zerosum ideas of power and more in models in which the leader and his team
share power with other key actors (such as ministers, senior officials, the
Treasury, the Cabinet Office, etc.) in a core executive; resources are traded
and the relative power of the Prime Minister and other actors depends on
the particular issue and circumstances.
For such a so-called presidential figure Blair was blocked in key areas.
The Chancellor carved out a measure of autonomy hardly ever achieved
by a minister. Certain departments were regarded as Brown preserves,
certain ministers regarded as Brownites, and No. 10 staff complained that
on occasions there was almost a separate whipping operation. Across
much domestic policy Blair shared power with Gordon Brown. Brown
unilaterally took control of entry to the euro (‘our destiny’, according to
Blair) by announcing that it would be an economic decision. The
Treasury decided on the five tests that had to be satisfied for entry and
conducted the studies. Blair found Brown as niggardly in providing
information on the work as he was in giving advance details of his
Budgets. According to well-placed sources Blair was so committed to
entry that he offered to surrender the premiership in return for Brown’s
support for membership. He failed to achieve entry, a policy central to his
goal of putting Britain at the heart of EU decision-making.
11 Richard Rose, The Prime Minister in a Shrinking World (Cambridge: Polity, 2001).
In domestic policy the Treasury and No. 10 were often at odds after
2001. Brown’s opposition to foundation hospitals (involving a letter circulated to the cabinet outlining his disagreement with the Prime
Minister’s policy) and academy schools meant that the final schemes were
severely watered down. In both health and education Treasury opposition to Blair’s agenda of diversity of suppliers and choice for consumers
was supported by a number of Labour MPs. Not until 2006 and 2007 was
Blair able to curb Brown’s passion for means testing and tax credits and
effect compromises on pensions and disability benefits.
Not surprisingly, Blair was pressed by many of his entourage to
demonstrate his authority and sack or move Brown from the Treasury.
Some of his staff in late 2004 and early 2005 argued that this would be
necessary if he was to rescue or further his domestic reform agenda. Blair
and his staff held discussions about moving Brown and plans were prepared to split the Treasury after the 2005 general election. Blair did not
act, regarding both as politically impossible after the 2005 general election: one reason for his feeling deflated for a time after the election result
was that it had not given him the mandate to move against the
Chancellor. His unwillingness to move was remarkable testimony to
Brown’s power. Only the Wilson–Callaghan government (1974–9) and
Churchill’s administration (1951–5) had a single Chancellor. Margaret
Thatcher had three and Major two Chancellors. What was sometimes
called a dual premiership was inherently destabilising; the tensions
between the rival tribes of No. 10 and No. 11 wasted so much energy. A
senior official who worked closely for both men reflected sadly; ‘When
you think of everything they could have done together the conflict preventing them is just the most extraordinary waste.’
Despite the continued attempts to resource No. 10 so that it could
drive departments and draw up public service targets, impose reviews of
policy under Lord Birt, and hold bimonthly bilaterals with ministers in
key departments to monitor progress, Blair was often frustrated. Senior
officials sometimes commented that Blair (who had no prior departmental experience) and his staff seemed to have little idea of how departments
worked. The departments are better resourced in staff, budgets and
expertise than No. 10 and after the departure of Derek Scott from No. 10
in 2003 Blair had no economic adviser. He had become aware of the limits
of central control. Charles Leadbeater and Peter Hyman, both of whom
had worked for Blair, reported after they left Downing Street on how the
&n
bsp; great expectations of No. 10 are often wrecked on the front line.
Appearing before the Liaison Committee in 2002 Blair admitted: ‘After
five years in government. I know only too well that passing legislation or
making speeches will not solve vandalism on estates, raise standards in
secondary schools, look after the elderly at risk. Indeed the state can
sometimes become part of the problem.’ He could echo Hotspur’s rejoinder to Glendower’s ‘I can call spirits from the very deep’, ‘But will they
come when you do call for them?’
Over twenty years ago Sir John Hoskyns, the first head of Margaret
Thatcher’s Policy Unit, challenged the belief that the gene pool of the
majority party in the House of Commons was large enough to find the
staff to run a modern government. Blair may have had less ministerial
talent at his disposal than Attlee (with Bevin, Bevan, Cripps, Morrison
and Gaitskell) or Thatcher (with Howe, Hurd, Lawson, Clarke, Patten
and Heseltine). He had Brown and for a time Blunkett, but after that it is
hard to make a positive case for the rest.
The drive for public service reform came almost entirely from No. 10.
He was aided by a few ministers and relied heavily on his principal private
secretaries, Jeremy Heywood and Ivan Rodgers, on Policy Unit heads
Andrew (now Lord) Adonis and David Bennett, and on advisers Simon
Stevens and Paul Corrigan for health. In forming his new government in
2001 he was determined to tackle the reform of public services, and he
promised ministers in four key departments that they would remain in
post for the duration of the parliament. Within two years three had, for
various reasons, left and the fourth did not stay the course.
Blair, the greatest election winner in the party’s history, has been an
outstanding coalition-builder. Successful electoral leaders bring ‘added
value’ to the party’s normal vote. Since Margaret Thatcher and John
Major in 1992 Conservative leaders have been unable to reach beyond the
party’s core vote. Until 1997 this was also a challenge for Labour, as the
size of its base in the working class, trade unions and council estates was
shrinking. Blair and the creators of New Labour knew that the party had
to attract not only those who had left the party but those who had never
voted for it. The target voters (those the party needed to win over) were
female, in the south-east, homeowners, and among the aspirational
working class who had switched to Margaret Thatcher. Blair has always
courted the median voter. Even after ten years in office surveys report that
voters still place Blair at the mid-point of the political spectrum, which is
where most voters place themselves; they locate Brown and the Labour
Party to the left of the centre. In the 2005 election Labour’s share of the
working-class vote was the same as in 1992 but was 11% higher among
middle-class professionals.
Blair broke new ground for the party; his big tent could include everybody. He appealed to business and the City and cultivated the Murdoch
press. Lance Price, a No. 10 press secretary, claimed that Rupert
Murdoch’s influence on the government at times seemed to be second
only to that of Blair and Brown. Blair dispensed with ideology, proudly
proclaiming that he was in favour of what works. He shamelessly borrowed from the centre-right parties to call Labour the people’s party or a
one-nation party.
Like a number of former premiers, he has said that he wished he had
been bolder. Yet he took risks with his party over top-up tuition fees,
foundation hospitals, academies, public private partnerships and of
course allying Britain with such a right-wing US President. He took the
party beyond its comfort zone and this was reflected in the rise of dissent
among Labour MPs, as Philip Cowley shows in chapter 2.
In 1997 New Labour transformed British election campaigning. It was
so successful that the Conservatives have been trying to copy it. William
Hague gave each member of his shadow cabinet a copy of Philip Gould’s
The Unfinished Revolution. How The Modernisers Saved the Labour Party,2
with the inscription, ‘Know Thine Enemy’. The book became a campaign
manual for the party. But it was soon clear that if Labour’s support was
wide it was not deep. A consequence of the decline in party loyalty is that
voting ties are often conditional and held lightly; the electorate is more
volatile; and more voters are inclined not to vote at all. A downside of the
big tent approach has been, as his former strategy chief Geoff Mulgan
points out, that the government was reluctant to tackle a number of
vested interests in the media, business and the City.
Tony Blair, like Attlee and Gaitskell, also public school-educated, was
not born to the Labour Party; he chose it. But his determination not to be
constrained by it and his impatience with the party’s democratic procedures – again (like Whitehall) he dismissed as ‘process’ – have helped to
de-energise the party. One needs to be careful here. Mass political parties
have been in decline for some years across Europe and a spell in government often results in the weakening of the party, as Labour found in 1970
and 1979 and the Conservatives by 1997. Blair’s approach to election campaigning, fund-raising and policy-making has allowed little influence to
the party. His tendency to ‘triangulate’ policy positions between Labour
traditions and the opposition encouraged him to stand apart from his
12 Philip Gould, The Unfinished Revolution. How The Modernisers Saved the Labour Party
(London: Little, Brown, 1997).
party. The ‘third way’ was a good example of finding a way between state
socialism and free market conservatism.
Cabinet government rarely thrived under Blair. Compared with his
predecessors, his cabinets met less frequently, were shorter and had fewer
papers before them. Starting with the Bank of England decision (‘They’ll
back it’, he told the Cabinet Secretary when explaining why there was no
need to discuss the important change of policy) and the perfunctory
cabinet discussion to proceed with the Dome (‘Let’s back Tony’, said John
Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister), Blair has preferred informal discussion, often un-minuted, in what has been called ‘sofa government’. He
has been impatient with Whitehall commitment to what he referred dismissively as ‘process’. Lord Butler’s report in 2004 on the quality of the
intelligence before the Iraq War complained that Blair’s approach suffered
from ‘a lack of reasoned deliberation’, too much preoccupation with presentation, and ‘too much central control’. The report also noted that
although there were several cabinet meetings to discuss the decision to go
to war ministers rarely saw the high-quality papers written by officials.
Perhaps because he realised that his influence was waning, he did use the
cabinet more during 2004 for the five-year plans, and again during his
last
six months in working on six policy commissions.
The number of policy failures would provide ample material for an
updated version of Paul Ormerod’s Why Most Things Fail.3 Over the Blair
decade the Audit Commission and the House of Commons Public
Accounts Committee have gathered a rich harvest of failed initiatives. Just
a sample would include: expensive IT disasters; hardship caused for poor
families by errors in the working families tax credit system; several costly
reorganisations in the health service, schools and examination systems
and the Home Office; failure to build more prisons to accommodate the
rising number of offenders consequent on the scores of offences created
by over fifty law-and-order measures; and the chaos caused by the introduction of the online schemes of application for training places for junior
doctors.
Promising to be purer than pure in the wake of the damage that allegations of sleaze had done for the Major government, Blair made a good
start with a reform of party finance. But the Ecclestone donation to party
funds and the exemption of his Formula One from the ban on cigarette
advertising, down to the Labour loans scandal (and keeping them secret
from the party treasurer) destroyed Blair’s reputation for transparency.
13 Paul Ormerod, Why Most Things Fail (London: Faber and Faber, 2005).
Of course, Blair’s government was only the latest to reward donors and
lenders of funds with favours and political honours, but no previous
prime minister had been so outspoken about transparency and ‘cleaning
up’ party finance.
The degeneration of the commitment to good communications to the
worst types of political ‘spin’ and economy with the truth has often been
described by journalists and disillusioned Labour colleagues. Promises of
future action and boasts of achievements were never understated. It is
embarrassing to recall the double and triple counting of spending, or the
‘48 hours to save the NHS’, Britain as ‘a beacon to the world’, and ‘worldclass services’. Ultimately it was self-defeating. The misuse of the intelligence to justify war with Iraq only further dented public confidence in the
honesty of the Prime Minister. There has been a steady decline in the