the task it faces in the future. For much of the Cabinet Office’s work, there
is either ambiguity over the scope of its role and powers, or overlap
between the work of various units. Clearer remits and business models are
essential if the Cabinet Office is to exert effective leverage over service
delivery from its position in the centre.80
In a similar vein, the Public Administration Select Committee commented on the ‘difficulty in determining priorities’ in the ‘highly
complex organisation of the Cabinet Office itself, with a profusion of
small units and divisions all exercising surveillance and issuing instructions from the centre of government’.81
The governance story points to a net Brown effect. A key characteristic of the period 1997–2007 is the vulnerability of the Prime Minister,
like all prime ministers, to both national and international events; the
contingency of ‘events, dear boy, events’. To compare Blair pre-Iraq and
post-Iraq is to see that prime-ministerial pre-eminence comes and goes.
Add the court politics of the Brown–Blair rivalry and we have a picture
76 Michel Barber, ‘Why Giving the Prime Minister More Power, Not Less, Must Be
New Leader’s First Step’, The Times, 14 May 2007, at: www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/
politics/article1784690.ece?printϭyes.
77 Seldon, Blair, p. 692.
78 Official cited in Hennessy, ‘The Blair Revolution’, p. 10.
79 Cabinet Office, Capability Review, p. 14.
80 Cabinet Office, Capability Reviews Tranche 2: Common Themes and Summaries (London:
Cabinet Office, 2006), p. 17.
81 Public Administration Select Committee, Making Government Work, para. 42.
. . .
of a government in which barons vie for favour in the court of a wouldbe president as dependent on them for support as they are on him for
favours.82 In addition, the greatest baron was Gordon Brown who constructed ‘a command Chancellorship – not seen in Whitehall since
Neville Chamberlain occupied Number 11 Downing Street, when
Stanley Baldwin was at Number 10 in the 1920s and 1930s’.83
So the centre of government was characterised, not by primeministerial centralisation, but by two men each presiding over their territory, which was ever more jealously guarded. Brown was ‘immovable’,
‘dominating his own territory’ with ‘jagged defences designed to repel
any invader, including the Prime Minister’. So ‘they were not interested
in submerging their differences in outlook, but in making an exhibition
of them’.84 At times, Brown was ‘the official opposition to Blair within
the very heart of the Cabinet’.85 One result was a bifurcated centre. The
Treasury set the strategic agenda across government, engaged in specific
policy development and monitored progress against targets to a previously unprecedented extent. There was significant overlap and competition with the Cabinet Office and the PMSU. But there was one major
difference. The Treasury had the hard levers, the Cabinet Office did not.
‘He who pays the piper calls the tune’, and Brown’s reforms commanded
the undivided attention of departments. Having witnessed visitations by
both the Delivery Unit and the Treasury to the departments, it was clear
whose views carried the greatest weight. The Treasury was greeted with a
caution and care bordering on white-knuckle nerves. In all too sharp
contrast, the Delivery Unit was accorded a polite, urbane reception.86
The Brown–Blair rivalry is not just about personalities and court politics. It is about who controls the heart of the machine and the Treasury
won. Brown’s reform agenda was fuelled by his political agenda. It will be
interesting to see whether his successor can sustain the reform momentum when Brown is Prime Minister or whether No. 10 will become the
undisputed wellspring of reform.87
82 On the ‘oestrogen-fuelled’, ‘ Girl’s Own, comic book’ view of life at the No. 10 court, see
Francis Beckett and David Hencke, The Blairs and their Court (London: Aurum Press, 2004).
83 Peter Hennessy, ‘Rulers and Servants of the State: The Blair Style of Government
1997–2004’, Parliamentary Affairs, 58, 2005: 9.
84 James Naughtie, The Rivals: The Intimate Story of a Political Marriage, rev. edn (London:
Fourth Estate, 2002), p. 352.
85 Robert Peston, Brown’s Britain (London: Short Books, 2005), p. 353.
86 Private information.
87 For a discussion see Patrick Diamond (ed.), Public Matters – The Renewal of the Public
Realm (London: Politico’s, 2007).
Tony Blair’s record on central reform could be likened to a permanent
revolution but few flowers grew to maturity. Of course, there was change.
But as one senior figure said: ‘Blair confuses the civil servants around
him . . . On the civil service he doesn’t know what he wants. They say, in
effect, “Tell me what you want and we’ll do it.” But he keeps saying
different things. Richard Wilson finds it very difficult the way the Prime
Minister jumps around.’88 Moreover, politics, value clashes, interests,
cultures, symbolic games and accountability all limit the usefulness of
private sector management techniques in the public sector. Civil servants
are not venal, or even reluctant, when implementing such reforms. But
the brute fact is that top civil servants are political administrators, not
managers. Their job is to take care of their minister. If there is failure, it is
not a failure of leadership by Permanent Secretaries but a failure of political leadership because the Prime Minister and ministers did not know
what they wanted. There was no consistent vision and it was a recipe for,
and a classic example of, muddling through.
88 Hennessy, ‘The Blair Revolution’, p.9.
6
The Constitution
One area in which there was a clear divide between the parties in 1997 was
that of constitutional reform. The Conservatives were defenders of existing
arrangements. Labour advocated a major overhaul of the nation’s constitutional arrangements. The party’s proposals did not figure at the forefront
of the party’s election manifesto – they appeared on pages 32 and 33 – but
they presaged a major change in the constitutional landscape of the United
Kingdom. Although the implementation of the proposals was not exhaustive, by May 2007 the British Constitution was very different from that
which existed when Tony Blair entered Downing Street.
Labour’s proposals
By the 1990s, the basic tenets of the British Constitution had not changed
substantially since the emergence of a cabinet-centred Westminster
model of government in the late nineteenth century.1 UK membership of
the European Communities in 1973 was the only major change of recent
decades to challenge some of the basic principles. Otherwise, the constitutional landscape for much of the past century had been largely undisturbed and, for a good part of the period, had not figured on the agenda
of political debate.
Demands for change began to be heard in the 1960s and 1970s. There
was evidence of a growing discontent with the system o
f government,
especially in parts of the United Kingdom distant from London. The
Labour government appointed a Royal Commission on the Constitution
in 1969: its report in 1973 recommended that ‘devolution could do
much to reduce the discontent’.2 During the 1970s and 1980s, there were
11 Philip Norton, ‘The Norton View’, in David Judge (ed.), The Politics of Parliamentary
Reform (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1983), pp. 56–61.
12 Royal Commission on the Constitution 1969–1973, vol. I: Report, Cmnd 5460 (London:
HMSO, 1973), para. 1102, p. 331.
increasingly vocal calls for a Bill of Rights and for electoral reform. A
Labour government in the 1974–9 parliament sought, unsuccessfully, to
implement devolution in Scotland and Wales. In 1988, on the tercentenary of the Glorious Revolution, the constitutional reform movement
Charter ’88 was founded. It collected to its banner not only longstanding
reformers of the centre but also leftist intellectuals and party activists.3 It
advocated a new constitutional settlement for the United Kingdom, with
wide-ranging changes to be embodied in a written Constitution.
The Conservative response under the premierships of Margaret
Thatcher and John Major was to resist demands for change. They embraced
the traditional approach to constitutional change: that is, advocating the
Westminster model.4 John Major was a particularly vocal advocate of
maintaining the Union.5 Others putting their heads above the parapet to
join the debate were John Patten and Douglas Hurd.6 To assuage demands
for devolution, there were some changes to parliamentary procedures to
give Scotland a greater voice at Westminster, but the basic message was one
of defending the extant Constitution. It may not be the ideal (though many
thought it was) but it was the real and it was deemed to deliver benefits that
would be destroyed by the changes demanded by Charter ’88.
In contrast, Labour’s stance was radical, although it varied over the
years. Under Michael Foot’s leadership, the party adopted a socialist
approach to constitutional change.7 In order to create ‘a democratic
socialist society in Britain’, its commitments included withdrawal from
the European Community and the abolition of the House of Lords. This
approach was modified under the leadership of Neil Kinnock and John
Smith. Smith, in particular, moved the party away from a socialist to a
liberal approach to constitutional change,8 more in line with the policies
advocated by Charter ’88. He had been a key figure in Labour’s devolution
legislation in the 1970s,9 ‘but Smith’s plans for constitutional change went
13 Philip Norton, ‘In Defence of the Constitution: A Riposte to the Radicals’, in Philip Norton
(ed.), New Directions in British Politics (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1991), pp. 147–8.
14 See Philip Norton, The Constitution in Flux (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1982), pp. 279–87.
15 See e.g. John Major, Scotland in the United Kingdom (London: Conservative Political
Centre, 1992).
16 Douglas Hurd, Conservatism in the 1990s (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1991);
John Patten, Political Culture, Conservatism and Rolling Consensus (London: Conservative
Political Centre, 1991).
17 Norton, The Constitution in Flux, pp. 263–7. See also Geoff Hodgson, Labour at the
Crossroads (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1981).
18 Norton, The Constitution in Flux, pp. 275–9.
19 Mark Stuart, John Smith: A Life (London: Politico’s, 2005), pp. 74–94.
far beyond Scotland, and were to be extended across the whole country’.10
Though sceptical of electoral reform, he embraced devolution, House
of Lords reform, the incorporation of the European Convention on
Human Rights into British law, regional government, and a Freedom of
Information Bill. Following publication of the Plant report on electoral
reform, he committed the party to a referendum on the subject.
After John Smith’s death, Tony Blair sought to maintain the commitment to constitutional reform. In his 1994 Leadership Election Statement,
he committed a future Labour government to legislate in the first year
for a Scottish Parliament. He also supported the creation of a Welsh
Assembly, an elected second chamber, the entrenchment of rights for
every citizen in a Bill of Rights for Britain, and a reform of parliamentary
procedure. ‘We should’, he declared, ‘also make the case for regional government in England.’ He said he fully supported the party’s commitment
to a referendum on the issue of the electoral system for the House of
Commons.11 These views were developed by Peter Mandelson and Roger
Liddle in The Blair Revolution: Can New Labour Deliver? in 1996,12 though
they argued for removing hereditary peers from the House of Lords rather
than an immediate move to any elected element – ‘perhaps there could be
a directly elected element with an avowedly regional element’.13
Labour’s election manifesto in 1997 largely embodied these views. It
attacked the Conservative record – ‘the Conservatives seem opposed to
the very idea of democracy’ – and the system of government: ‘Our system
of government is centralised, inefficient and bureaucratic.’ There was, it
declared, ‘a crisis of confidence in our political system, to which Labour
will respond in a measured and sensible way’.14 The headline commitments were:
End the hereditary principle in the House of Lords;
Reform of party funding to end sleaze;
Devolved power in Scotland and Wales;
Elected mayors for London and other cities;
More independent but accountable local government;
Freedom of information and guaranteed human rights.15
10 Ibid., p. 293.
11 Tony Blair MP, Change and National Renewal, Leadership Election Statement 1994
(London, 1994).
12 Peter Mandelson and Roger Liddle, The Blair Revolution: Can New Labour Deliver?
(London: Faber and Faber, 1996), pp. 189–210.
13 Ibid., p. 205.
14 New Labour, Because Britain Deserves Better (London: Labour Party, 1997), p. 32.
15 Ibid., p. 33.
Though not in the headline commitments, the manifesto also committed the party to a referendum on the voting system for the House of
Commons. An independent commission on voting systems would be
appointed early to recommend a proportional alternative to the firstpast-the-post system. On regional government, it noted that there was no
uniform demand for directly elected regional government. ‘In time we
will introduce legislation to allow the people, region by region, to decide
in a referendum whether they want directly elected regional government.
Only when clear popular consent is established will arrangements be
made for elected regional assemblies.’ As the party did not wish to create
a new layer of government, a predominantly unitary (and cost-neutral)
system of local government would be created. On Northern Ireland, the
/>
cross-party approach would be maintained to try to find a political settlement that could command both sides of the community in the province.
Devolution to Scotland and Wales was to take place ‘once established
in referendums’. Blair had decided in favour of referendums, despite misgivings on the part of some Labour MPs, in order to demonstrate support
for devolution. In a separate section, on Britain’s international role, the
manifesto also committed the party to holding a referendum on Britain
joining a single currency. The referendum would be the third and final
stage of acceptance, following approval by the cabinet and by parliament.16 Referendums were no longer novel to the British Constitution,
but only one had been held previously on a UK-wide basis.
What did the government deliver?
Blair thus entered office with a substantial set of proposals for constitutional reform. In his second term, he also generated proposals, not
embodied in the party manifesto, for the creation of a supreme court and
the disappearance of the substantive role of the Lord Chancellor. To what
extent, then, were these several commitments met? The record of Blair’s
decade can be summarised as follows.
Devolution
The government moved quickly to introduce legislation to provide for
referendums in Scotland and Wales. The Scottish referendum delivered
decisive majorities in favour of a parliament and for it to have tax-raising
16 Ibid., p. 38.
powers. The Welsh referendum, in contrast, was less than decisive. On a
50% turnout, 50.3% voted ‘Yes’ and 49.7% voted ‘No’. The Scotland Act
1998 devolved executive and legislative powers, other than in reserved
areas, to an elected parliament in Scotland and the Government of Wales
Act 1998 devolved some executive powers to a National Assembly for
Wales. Devolution soon became an established part of the constitutional
landscape. In a speech in February 1998, Conservative leader William
Hague accepted that devolution was going to happen and that there was
no point in seeking to turn the clock back. The process of devolving
powers successfully was facilitated by the fact that one party was dominant in Westminster, Holyrood and Cardiff, and that many of those
BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007 Page 18