BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007
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crises.
15 Patrick Dunleavy, ‘Facing up to Multi-party Politics’, Parliamentary Affairs, 58, 2005:
503–32, at p. 502.
6 Ibid., p. 503.
The Blair style of party leadership
Party leaders, especially when in government, have never been beholden
to their extra-parliamentary party. As McKenzie long ago asserted, decision-making authority resides ‘with the leadership groups thrown up
by the parliamentary parties (of whom much the most important individual is the party leader), and they will exercise this authority so long as
they retain the confidence of their parliamentary parties’.7 Labour’s
extra-parliamentary party has only occasionally been able to tip the
balance of power in its favour. This was, as in 1951–5, 1970–4 and
1979–82, usually when the party found itself in opposition following a
period of government, the leadership was damaged by electoral failure,
and when a critical mass of party dissidents damned the party for failing
to seek policies in line with Labour’s doctrine and ethos. On such occasions, however, a parliamentary leadership was able to reassert its control.
Parties, only nominally internally democratic, have always been run by
their parliamentary elite. Today, however, thanks largely to changes instigated by both Blair and Neil Kinnock, Labour is more than ever run by a
parliamentary leader (and his allies) nominated from among the parliamentary party and first elected by an electoral college comprising MPs,
party members and members of affiliated organisations. Blair was a powerful leader because the direction of the major political parties is decided
more and more by the parliamentary leadership, and less and less influenced by the wider membership.8 Party leaders have to take note of party
opinion, but are not bound by it; Blair, the beneficiary of this phenomenon, has further advanced it. Party officials now work with and to the
parliamentary party leadership. Again, this is not down to Blair alone, but
an ongoing trend has been exacerbated by Blair’s (and Gordon Brown’s)
centralised control. This has established a leadership template that
others, not least David Cameron, now eagerly follow.
The concept of the presidentialisation of party leaders, while it ultimately misleads,9 owes much to the far-reaching changes enacted in the
form of British political leadership. There are three interrelated features of
17 Robert McKenzie, British Political Parties (London: Heinemann, 1964), p. 635.
18 Ibid.; Richard Katz and Peter Mair, ‘The Ascendancy of the Party in Public Office: Party
Organisational Change in Twentieth Century Democracies’, in Richard Gunther, José
Ramón Montero and Juan Linz (eds.), Political Parties: Old Concepts and New Challenges
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
19 Richard Heffernan, ‘Why the Prime Minister Cannot Be a President: Comparing
Institutional Imperatives in Britain and America’, Parliamentary Affairs, 58, 2005: 53–70.
contemporary politics which, in Michael Foley’s useful concept, help to
‘stretch’ the Prime Minister away from both party and government.10 First,
the personal leadership style of Blair – and of Margaret Thatcher – further
centred Blair at the heart of government. Second, the media-led phenomenon of political personalisation increasingly spotlighted Blair while ‘marginalizing other political actors to the periphery of public attention’,11
with the exception of Gordon Brown. Third, the ‘hollowing out’ of political parties, their declining membership, the professionalisation and centralisation of their mode of campaigning, granted Blair and other party
leaders a firmer grip over Labour’s policy agenda and political direction.
Parties, Blair insisted, have now to be led by their leaders because leadership is now considered the key ‘medium of political discourse and information’.12 Labour, being so ‘permanently enthralled with the projected
utility and leverage of [its] actual or potential leaders’,13 invested Tony
Blair with considerable authority, something which extended the autonomy of the party leader, particularly the party leader as prime minister. It
may be, as Anthony King suggests, that ‘the personalities of leaders and
candidates matter a lot less, and a lot less often, in elections than is usually
supposed’,14 but parties believe electors place a great emphasis on party
leaders and this is why they place a considerable emphasis on having a
dynamic leadership. As Blair himself said on more than one occasion,
‘there’s only one thing the public dislike more than a leader in control of
his party and that is a leader not in control of his party’.15
Blair benefited from (but he helped further advance) the transformation of British political parties, in common with European counterparts,
from mass-membership, bureaucratic parties into their present-day electoral professional ‘catch-all’ form. An electoral professional party, as
defined by Panebianco, has the following characteristics: a central role of
professionals with expertise in electoral mobilisation; weak vertical ties to
social groups and broader appeals to the ‘opinion electorate’; the preeminence of public representatives and personalised leadership; financing through interest groups and public funds; and an emphasis on issues
and leadership.16 Electoral professionalism reflects the fact that parties,
10 Michael Foley, The British Presidency (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).
11 Ibid., p. 293.
12 Ibid., p. 230.
13 Ibid., p. 356.
14 Anthony King, ‘Conclusions and Implications’, in Anthony King (ed.), Leaders’
Personalities and the Outcomes of Democratic Elections (Oxford: Oxford University Press),
p. 220.
15 Rawnsley, Servants of the People, p. 363.
16 Angelo Panebianco, Political Parties: Organisation and Power (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988), p. 264.
having transformed themselves into less ideologically pure organisations,
see competence and image, not ideology or policy, as the key to electoral
success. They increasingly prize office-seeking over policy-seeking, particularly if they have recently been repeatedly electorally unsuccessful.
Again, as a result, the party leadership, the party in ‘public office’, will be
considered the party’s principal electoral asset. In turn, leaders, none
more so than Blair, assert their prerogatives and limit the institutional ties
preventing them from leading the party in the way they wish. Obviously
such reality is not simply the product of Tony Blair’s leadership. Blair, like
Margaret Thatcher before him, has been the beneficiary of an ongoing,
developmental process of party transformation. More importantly,
however, Blair’s leadership style both reinforced and reflected these existing trends. His domination of the Labour Party, in both opposition and
government, helped root further the leader-centric imperative found in
British political life.
Blair’s political centrality owed something to his style and electoral
popularity, but owed much to what is describ
ed as the personalisation
of politics. An age-old phenomenon, personalisation has reached
unimagined heights in recent years, as parties are built around the party
leader as prime minister or prime minister designate. The leader’s centrality is clearly reinforced (but is sometimes undermined) by the
impacts of modern political communications, not least by the propensity of the news media to over-report him or her. Obviously, media coverage spotlights the party leader, but need not necessarily showcase
him or her. Tony Blair and David Cameron may at times have enjoyed
favourable, supportive coverage when Leader of the Opposition, but
William Hague or Iain Duncan-Smith did not. News media coverage
reflects a reality at the same time as it amplifies that reality. Blair was
empowered by being reported as a successful and a popular party leader,
an asset to the Labour Party and the government. He was disempowered
once the news media began to report him as unpopular and failing. In
response, both as party leader and Prime Minister, Blair used the
news media to advantage Labour, but he also used it to advantage
himself, to set the policy agenda within the government, to demonstrate
his utility to the party and/or government, and to gather troops within
the party and among the public at large. Of course, in doing this, aided
and abetted by Alistair Campbell and Peter Mandelson, Blair laid
himself open to claims that he was a ‘control freak’, ensuring that ‘spin’
would become for Labour what ‘sleaze’ had been for the Major-led
Conservatives.
Labour’s parliamentary party as Blair’s prime-ministerial base
British political parties, long subdivided into leaders, sub-leaders and
non-leaders, the parliamentary and the extra-parliamentary party, are
now also distinguished by distinctions within the parliamentary party,
most notably between the front bench and the back bench, parliamentary leaders and followers. The ‘party in public office’, the party leadership, not the parliamentary party as a whole, runs the show. As Prime
Minister, Blair enjoyed the institutional powers conferred by that office,
but he had additional power conferred by being leader of his party.
Being a strong party leader between 1997 and 2005 helped make Blair a
strong Prime Minister; being a strong Prime Minister strengthened him
as party leader. The two roles were inextricably linked. British parties,
influenced by the majoritarian and unitary traditions of the British
political tradition, are increasingly and fiercely hierarchical in form. It
is the party leader – the prime minister or the prime-ministerial ‘candidate’ and their staffs – who, in consultation with other key party figures,
draws up the manifesto presented to the electorate. Labour candidates
have no positive say in policy deliberation, although those MPs who
come to occupy the front bench have some say in policy implementation. At British general elections electors largely vote for a party
candidate in support of the party’s national political image and programmatic stance. Increasingly, some say, they do so in support of the
party’s candidate for prime minister. Throughout his leadership Blair
used this to his advantage. As leader, Blair (and those trusted to act on
his behalf) largely controlled access to the front bench, although this
control was fettered by a number of factors, not least his need to
appease Gordon Brown, reward friends, advantage talent and, less so
than previously, balance mainstream party factions. Of course, he did
not have the ability to choose his chancellor, or his deputy leader and he
had, unusually, to ensure a gender and geographical balance among his
ministers.
Nevertheless, Blair was advantaged, in common with all prime ministers, by the fact that his parliamentary party preferred to supply and
support the government of the day rather than effectively check or
balance it. While having to negotiate the various obstacles thrown up in
his path by the news media, the opposition, electoral opinion and the
pressure of events, Blair had carefully to manage Labour MPs, particularly his most senior parliamentary colleagues. Obviously, Blair’s leadership, never subject to a formal or informal inner-party challenge, was
enhanced in the eyes of MPs by being thrice endorsed by the electorate
(and by the anticipation that such endorsement was forthcoming). He
had to deal with the would-be challenge to his leadership from the longstanding pretender to his crown, Gordon Brown,17 but, in spite of the
growing fractiousness of the parliamentary Labour Party, something
born of an ever increasing unease over government policy and evidenced
in strong, significant parliamentary revolts,18 the parliamentary party
remained the mainstay of the Blair government. For the most part, the
majority of backbench MPs, as likely to be spectators of Blair’s government as to participate in it, toed the party line for a number of reasons,
usually partisan disposition and/or policy agreement, but also careerist
self-interest.
No claim can be made, however, that Tony Blair always and everywhere got his own way. He was stymied in his efforts to prevent Ken
Livingstone from ultimately becoming Labour’s London Mayor or
Rhodri Morgan from becoming Welsh First Minister. Blair may have been
able to face down his party, not least in regard to economic policy, Iraq,
Afghanistan and the war on terror, labour laws, criminal justice policy,
education and university funding, but limits to his authority were
imposed by elements within his party. He might not, in his own words,
have had a ‘reverse gear’, but Labour sometimes imposed speed restrictions on him. Occasionally, as in the case of British entry to the euro,
ministers could route him in a different direction. All political leaders
have their freedom of manoeuvre restricted by what their party and the
public permit and what events allow. Blair eagerly kicked against such
constraints and was remarkably successful in governing against the
ingrained instincts of the Labour Party, but he still had to work with and
through party colleagues who could assert their preferences and sometimes protect their interests. Of course, as Blair recognised, Labour’s
DNA meant that the party still drew electoral strength from leftist, progressive voters supportive of the party’s perceived opposition to the
Conservative Party. MPs and members instinctively sought to push
Labour leftwards not rightwards. As a result, while freer than ever to
direct the party in his chosen direction, Blair had still to manage his party,
pay heed to its established shibboleths, and manage his base of support
among the electorate at large. Clearly, parliamentary rebellions – or the
threat of rebellion – limited Blair’s freedom of manoeuvre. He had to
17 Anthony Seldon, Blair (London: The Free Press, 2004); Robert Peston, Brown’s Britain
(London: Short Books, 2005).
18 Philip Cowley, The Rebels (London: Politico’s, 2005).
k
eep a substantial majority of his MPs sweet. Usually, enough of them
were publicly sweet even when they were privately unhappy. Blair, despite
rebellions by a minority of his MPs, often obliged loyalists to back measures they would probably have preferred not to support. This cannot,
however, always be assumed. All leaders know that even the most abject
worm may one day turn.
As leader Blair also benefited from the unintended consequences of
the extension of the franchise to elect the Labour leader beyond the
parliamentary party. This reform, while instigated by the Labour left to
make it easier for the leader to be fired, strengthened, not weakened,
the party leader. Formal Labour leadership challenges are extremely
rare, with only three since 1945, and only one challenge, the doomed
effort of Tony Benn to unseat Neil Kinnock in 1988, since the extension
of the franchise. This wider franchise made it impossible for a formal vote
of no-confidence in Tony Blair to have been organised, had the parliamentary party been so minded to hold one, which it was not. It makes
elections time-consuming and expensive, imposes high nomination barriers and eviction costs which deter would-be challengers, and so make
leaders considerably more secure in office.19 This meant Gordon Brown,
long the leader-in-waiting, would have had to mount a direct frontal
assault on Blair, something that would have necessitated his resignation
from the government. It would also have increased the likelihood of
failure, when it was already said ‘whoever wields the dagger never wears
the crown’.
Blair stayed in office until 2007 relatively comfortably, the would-be
‘coup’ of September 2006 notwithstanding. It is not that hard to remove a
failing party leader. Iain Duncan Smith was unseated by a formal vote of
no-confidence by MPs in November 2003 and a decision by twenty-odd
Liberal Democrat frontbench spokespersons to no longer serve under
him obliged Charles Kennedy to stand down in January 2006. Of course,
both Duncan Smith and Kennedy were widely seen by their MPs to have
become electoral liabilities; Blair was never seen as such, not even at the
very end. Short of death, scandal, demonstrable electoral fallibility or
dramatic political failure, it is virtually impossible to unseat a popular