BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007
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public’s willingness to believe in either what ministers say or their integrity.
Not surprisingly, in 2007 Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister-designate,
and candidates for the party’s deputy leadership spoke of the need to
restore trust in government. It was a sad epitaph to the ten years in office.
III
Blair came to office with no experience of foreign affairs. His goals were to
put Britain at the heart of the EU, including British entry to the single
currency, and act as a bridge between Europe and the United States. He
failed on all counts.
The decision to go to war with Iraq dominated the second half of his
premiership and on his watch Britain was involved in more wars than
under any other leader. Neither could have been anticipated in 1997. All
prime ministers over time become more involved in what is happening
abroad: it is a consequence of increasing globalisation and interdependence and the growth of so many inter-governmental institutions and
summits of political heads of state and leaders. Richard Rose argues that
the increasing mix of domestic and international politics has given rise to
an ‘intermestic premiership’. Abroad, prime ministers often play before
less critical audiences than at home; there is no Leader of the Opposition
and no adversarial party system. The list of prime ministers who have
fallen from office because of failures in war and foreign policy is a long
one: Asquith, Lloyd George, Chamberlain and Eden were direct casualties. Power was slipping away from Callaghan while he was sunning
himself in Guadaloupe and the rest of the country was shivering in the
winter of discontent, and power-dressed Margaret Thatcher was being
feted in Paris when she learnt that she had failed to achieve a decisive
winning margin in her party’s leadership contest. History, as Blair often
says, will decide, but it has not been kinder to Chamberlain and appeasement or to Eden and Suez.
For many commentators, voters and members of the Labour Party
Iraq has been a disaster and blighted Blair’s premiership. Indeed harsher
critics see it as emblematic of his entire premiership. The decision to go to
war met significant opposition from the public and Labour MPs but was
backed by the cabinet – except for Robin Cook – and parliament. Yet it
was very much Blair’s personal decision and he has never apologised for
it. He still believes that at the time it was the right thing to do. Iraq is discussed in many of the following chapters but what is remarkable is how
Blair was able to compartmentalise the war and its fall-out. In spite of the
damage it continued to do to him and his policies he remained throughout committed to his reform programme. Down to the final months there
was no slackening of his energy or his impatience with departments
(notably the Home Office) that he thought were not performing.
But many of the causes he held dear and even hoped that Iraq might
advance have actually been harmed. He has ended up with a huge deficit.
Many of his party and much of the public have become negative about
Britain’s relationship with the US. Blair has been criticised for being too
supine towards President Bush, not offering a more independent voice
and not exercising more leverage, particularly over the Middle East and
post-war planning for Iraq. The war has set back his case for liberal interventionism against ‘rogue’ states (advanced in his Chicago speech in
1999). It is now harder for the US or Britain, even if they were so inclined,
to intervene or try to mobilise the international community to do so. The
war has further radicalised Muslims across the world and probably
increased the threat of terrorism. In his closeness to Bush, Blair damaged
Britain’s relations with Germany and France and ruined his hopes of
acting as a bridge between the EU and US. In future, the British public,
parliament and cabinet are more likely to be more sceptical about the
intelligence a prime minister presents when making the case for war. And,
as Andrew Gamble has argued,4 Britain is no nearer to resolving its international role between the poles of Europe and the United States. And of
course Blair had lost so much of the political capital he needed when he
turned his attention to radical public service reform.
14 Andrew Gamble, Between Europe and America. The Future of British Politics (London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
Conclusion
The two agenda-setting premierships of the last sixty years have been
those of Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher. Neither scored highly on
charisma and media skills, the qualities associated with Blair. But their
records have provided the bookends of modern British politics. The
agenda-shaper’s success is best measured by the extent to which the
opposition party accepts his/her policies. The 1945 Labour government’s
success was seen in the Conservative acceptance of full employment, the
NHS and the welfare state, and public ownership of the main utilities.
The Thatcher influence was seen in Labour’s gradual acceptance of so
many policies they had once opposed – privatisation, levels of direct taxation, the use of the free market in public services and changes in industrial relations laws. Indeed the consolidation of the reforms led Simon
Jenkins to call Blair and Brown ‘Sons of Thatcher’.
This is hardly fair. Would Thatcher or Major have brought in devolution and proportional representation for non-Westminster elections, the
minimum wage, the social chapter, the redistributive budgets of Gordon
Brown, sought to enter the single currency or repealed Section 28?
Although he accepted much of the Thatcher settlement Blair willingly
presided over rises in taxation, public spending and public sector
employment.
The comparison with Thatcher can be pushed further. They are the
two dominant post-war premiers; they were the greatest election
winners in their parties’ histories, who created distinctive approaches –
Thatcherism and New Labour; they were figures who stood apart from
their parties but for many voters came to personify the party; and both
were helped greatly by the ineptitude and internal divisions of their
opponents. Thatcherism was in large part a reaction to the post-1945
Attlee settlement and the country’s decline she associated with it. New
Labour was, obviously, a reaction to the party’s decline but also to
Thatcherism.
The New Labour agenda of economic efficiency and social justice is
hardly distinctive – most administrations have at least paid lip service to
the goals, while differing about the means. But Blair has done much to
define the common ground between the main parties. David Cameron’s
Conservatives, on the back of three election defeats, have explicitly
accepted the mantra. By 2007 they had accepted the post-1997 constitutional changes, the minimum wage, repeal of Section 28, tuition fees in
higher education, and accorded spending on public services a greater
priority than tax cuts. They largely agree with the framework of the health
service and secondary schools by abandoning the 2005 promises of
extending grammar schools and introducing passports in health care and
schooling. Blair has made the opposition party uncomfortable by taking
over traditional Conservative ground on such issues as schools, anti-social
behaviour orders and security. He has been willing to tackle complex
and emerging issues like immigration and asylum, energy and climate
change, terrorism and security, and breaking up the one-size-fits-all
public services.
Politicians who retire under a cloud often say that it is for history to
judge their record. Blair has said this, rather forlornly, about Iraq. They
then usually give the lie to the disclaimer with their memoirs, interviews
and, where possible, farewell tours. Displaying little willingness to wait
for the verdict of history they try to write the first draft themselves.
Winston Churchill said that history would be kind to him for he intended
to write it. Judgements may change over time but it is worth noting that
the reputations of most British premiers have not changed much over the
years. Time has not done much to alter verdicts on, for example, Baldwin,
Chamberlain, Eden, Wilson or Thatcher. Perhaps only Attlee’s reputation
has risen over time. Although Iraq is a huge minus my guess is that shares
in Blair will also rise, albeit modestly.
2
Parliament
The case for the prosecution goes something like this. Tony Blair himself
was not a ‘House of Commons man’. He was rarely seen there during his
premiership, participating in just 8% of parliamentary votes between
1997 and 2007, a record low for any Prime Minister. He also had little
understanding of, or respect for, the traditions of parliament – and would
blithely demolish those practices he found inconvenient. One of his first
acts as Prime Minister was to change, without any consultation, Prime
Minister’s Questions from two sessions a week to just a single session,
thus reducing the ability of the Commons to hold him to account.
The government then carried out a string of other reforms, under the
guise of ‘modernisation’, which yet further limited parliamentary scrutiny.
Driven through by the newly established Committee on Modernisation – a
committee which was, extraordinarily, chaired by a member of the cabinet –
these reforms included restricting debate through the use of programming
motions (effectively a regularised use of the guillotine) and a series of other
procedural changes which made it harder for MPs to challenge the executive.
Matters were made worse by the behaviour of Labour MPs, who were
especially acquiescent, failing in their duty to challenge the government.
As well as sheep (a routine comparison), they were frequently compared
to poodles, clones, robots and – most bizarrely of all – daleks. Singled out
for especially acidic criticism were many of the women MPs – particularly
those elected in 1997. Dismissed as ‘Blair’s babes’, they were frequently
compared to the Stepford Wives – although the Conservative MP Ann
Widdecombe complained that the comparison was unfair to the Stepford
Wives.
The government’s damaging reforms included the upper chamber,
where the House of Lords Act 1999 removed most of the hereditary
peers – those who would defeat the government. These were replaced by
life peers more beholden to the Prime Minister, the so-called ‘Tony’s
cronies’. Despite their initial claims that this was just the first stage of an
ongoing process of Lords reform, the government then blocked any
further attempts to seriously reform the House of Lords, for fear of creating a stronger and more assertive upper House.
In short, parliament was systematically weakened under Tony Blair.
The modish Power Inquiry, which reported on the state of British democracy in 2006, argued that ‘the Executive in Britain is now more powerful
in relation to parliament than it has been probably since the time of
Walpole’.1 Writing in The Observer in 2007, the journalist Henry Porter
claimed that it was ‘one of the assured parts of [Tony Blair’s] legacy that
he leaves the House of Commons in a far worse state than he found it’.2
This case for the prosecution is heard with such frequency that it has
achieved the status of received wisdom. It would be possible to produce
dozens, maybe hundreds, of examples of claims akin to those listed
above, from the pages of newspapers and magazines, from within parliament itself, or from general political discourse. Yet the true picture of
parliament during the Blair era was more complicated than this. Pace
Henry Porter et al. , it is certainly not one of the assured parts of the Blair
legacy that he left the Commons – or parliament as a whole – in a worse
state than when he became Prime Minister. The true picture was messier,
and more balanced, than this melancholy caricature. The process of
Commons reform was more positive than many critics acknowledged.
That reform was accompanied by a growing activism and rebelliousness
amongst backbench Labour MPs, who became increasingly willing to
defy the leadership. Labour’s much maligned women MPs were also able
to point to a string of achievements. Similarly, the process of Lords
reform, whilst cack-handed and mismanaged, resulted in a much more
active and assertive second chamber: one which was prepared to defy the
government with increasing frequency and effect.
This chapter outlines the changes that occurred in parliament during
the Blair decade. The combined result of these developments was that for
most of its time in office the Blair government faced a partly reformed but
much more assertive House of Commons and a partly reformed but
much more assertive House of Lords. This was not really what it intended
nor what the Prime Minister desired, but it is also a more positive picture
than the government’s many critics appreciated.
11 Power to the People (London: The Power Inquiry, 2006), p. 128. You will, however, search
the list of experts who gave evidence to the Inquiry in vain for anyone who actually knew
anything about parliament at the time of Walpole.
12 Henry Porter, ‘Less a Servant of the People, more a Hammer of Parliament’, The Observer,
25 February 2007.
Modernisation
Labour came to power in 1997 pledging to reform both the House of
Commons and the House of Lords. Its 1997 manifesto contained a
section entitled ‘An effective House of Commons’, which declared that
the Commons was ‘in need of modernisation’.3 This had been preceded,
in 1996, by a speech from Ann Taylor, then Shadow Leader of the House,
in which she had claimed that ‘Labour’s true project for parliament’
would be both to produce better legislation and to make MPs more
effective at holdin
g the executive to account. ‘Awkward though it may
appear to a few on our side’, she argued, ‘a more accountable government is a better government.’4 A commitment to Commons reform was
also part of the pre-1997 Cook–Maclennan agreement between Labour
and the Liberal Democrats on the future direction of constitutional
reform.
The majority of the Blair government’s reforms came through the
Select Committee on the Modernisation of the House of Commons, a
cross-party committee of the Commons, which was established in June
1997. The Committee was established ‘to consider how the practices and
procedures of the House should be modernised, and to make recommendations thereon’. It proposed (and in most cases implemented) reforms
encompassing changes to the timetable, to the legislative process, to select
committees, to debates, to questions, and to public access. If nothing
else, the activities of the Modernisation Committee showed that it was
possible to reform the House of Commons. The Commons of 2007 was
procedurally significantly different to that of 1997. As a Hansard Society
study into modernisation noted: ‘The changes that have been implemented stand as a tangible correction to those who assert, wrongly, that
Westminster is a fossilised institution, unable or unwilling to adapt itself
to changed circumstances.’5
More debatable though was the nature of that change. Part of the
problem was that the word modernisation was itself largely meaningless.
As Richard Rose pointed out in 2001, the term ‘shows a preference for
what is new rather than what is old, and for change against the status quo.
But it did not identify what direction change should take.’6 As a result,
13 Because Britain Deserves Better (London: Labour Party, 1997), p. 33.
14 Speech to Charter 88, 14 May 1996.
15 Alex Brazier, Matthew Flinders and Declan McHugh, New Politics, New Parliament? A
Review of Parliamentary Modernisation since 1997 (London: Hansard Society, 2005).
16 Richard Rose, The Prime Minister in a Shrinking World (London: Polity, 2001), p. 228.
modernisation meant different things to different people.7 For some, it
was about making the Commons appear more modern, stripping away
some of the more antiquated procedures and practices. Others wanted