BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007
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expected that a Labour government, if elected, would increase income tax,
only 3% lower than the 66% who had expected a Kinnock government to
do so in 1992 (and 17% lower than the proportion who expected Labour
to raise taxes after May 2005). It was the same in 2001: as early as
December 1999, the public were convinced that taxes had risen under
Labour – only 28% thought that since 1997 the government had kept taxes
down while 57% thought it had not. By January 2001, ‘thinking about all
forms of taxation’, 48% thought taxes had gone up since 1997 ‘for most
people’ and 41% that their own personal taxes had increased. So voters
elected Tony Blair with a landslide in 1997, expecting him to increase
taxes, and re-elected him in 2001 believing that his government had done
so, and did so again in 2005.
What was different was that at each of his victories Blair had the credibility to deliver a policy for which there had actually been considerable public
support throughout the 1990s. One reason why Tony Blair was elected
three times and Neil Kinnock never was – apart from the weakness of the
Conservatives and the economic situation – was simply perceived competence. Evidence from the British Election Survey suggests that Labour’s
defeat in 1992 had resulted not from opposition to the idea of tax rises but
from distrust of a Kinnock government’s ability to spend the money raised
wisely and efficiently. In contrast, Blair and Brown’s most visible tax rises,
e.g. National Insurance rises for the NHS, were supported and generally
perceived to be necessary, with satisfaction with local health services rising
for much of his time in office. It was only in 2006, towards the end of Blair’s
tenure, that serious doubts in the public mind erupted over whether public
spending in the NHS was being wasted and the belief arose that the
Conservatives would be more competent to manage public services and
indeed the economy , whereas at the 2005 General Election Labour were
still seen as better placed to manage public spending (Figure 20.10).
A culture of spin and the trust deficit
One of the many criticisms of Blair’s government was that it was preoccupied with the ‘packaging of politics’ or, in other words, spin. The word has
become indelibly associated with him, and in 2007 even Peter Mandelson
confessed that presentation took precedence over policy at times.
Spin in itself is nothing new: the Labour Party set up its first press and
publicity department in 1912. What is new, however, is the high profile of
Q Do you think a Labour or a Conservative Government
would be most effective in getting good value for the public money it spends?
Don’t know
12%
None
Labour
12%
41%
Other
4%
30%
Conservative
Figure 20.10. Value for money from Labour?
Base: 1,005 British adults 181, 15–18 April 2005. Source: MORI/Financial Times
the personnel involved at the heart of government in managing the
message (Alastair Campbell, Charlie Whelan, Peter Mandelson and Jo
Moore became ‘household’ names during Blair’s premiership) and also
the prominence that has been attached to presentation. While survey
trends going back decades suggest it is wrong to talk about a new crisis of
trust in government under Blair, there were significant and worrying
declines in some aspects of trust in institutions and in straightforward
electoral participation, with Blair’s second two victories won on some of
the lowest turnouts ever. Many government initiatives over this period
attempted to address this, both by trying new ways of making the act of
voting easier – postal voting, and experiments with online and other
approaches – as well as measures to allow greater accountability and
transparency, for example the Freedom of Information Act, but overall
these often made no headway whatsoever in the face of a hostile media
which found itself in a Mexican standoff with the government, and
general disengagement from party politics.
Trust in the government and Blair specifically was a key issue in the
2005 general election. Debate tended to focus on the information that was
used to make the case for the war in Iraq, but this set the context for much
more general statements about how government generally could no
longer be trusted to provide high quality, accurate and unbiased information. Indeed, one of the key Conservative posters of the campaign was ‘ If
he’s prepared to lie to take us to war, he’s prepared to lie to win an election’.
Of course, lack of trust in politicians was not a new phenomenon. As
the chart below shows there was very little change in levels of trust in
% Trust them to tell the truth
100
90
Doctors
80
70
Police
60
50
40
Civil Servants
30
Government ministers
20
Politicians generally
10
Journalists
0
1983
1985
1987
1989
1991
1993
1995
1997
1999
2001
2003
2005
Figure 20.11. Trust in individual professions
Source: MORI/BMA
many professions from the 1980s onwards, with government ministers
and politicians always bumping along the bottom of the graph. Indeed,
the only notable shift in Blair’s term was the general increase in trust in
civil servants, something of a surprise given the negative focus of most
media coverage of government ‘bureaucrats’. Comparisons with other
European countries also showed that the UK was not unusual, with
around average levels of trust in our politicians (Figure 20.11).1
However, there were some significant declines in specific aspects of
trust in the UK which do suggest a shift in opinions. For example, as seen
in the chart below, trust in Tony Blair since 2000 saw a significant decline,
although this was most rapid before 2002 (when the Iraq War began), and
of course attitudes towards prime ministers generally decline through
their terms in office.
Trust in the government to act in the interests of the country rather
than their party seems rather more erratic, with a marked increase following the general election in 1997, followed by an even sharper decline
from 1999 to 2001. It is likely that the terrorist attacks in 2001 and the
general election contributed to something of a revival, but the decline following was equally sharp, and by 2003 the proportion who said they
trusted the government to act in the interests of the country was half that
seen in 1986 (Figure 20.12).
Sir Alistair Graham, Chairman of the Committee for Standards in Public
Life, set up following scandals over ‘Cash for Questions’ under the
&n
bsp; 11 This is seen in both the European Social Survey and Eurobarometer studies.
%
50
45
Tony Blair generally
40
trustworthy
35
30
25
20
Trust the government to put interests of country
15
before interests of party, most/all the time
10
5
0
1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
Year
Figure 20.12. Trust in the Prime Minister and Government
Source: MORI/BSA
Conservative administration of the 1990s, claimed Blair’s legacy will be ‘as
closely associated with the loss of public trust’2 as John Major’s was with
sleaze. In one sense the data seems to support this view. By 2005, six in ten
did not feel that the government used official figures honestly or that official
figures were produced without political interference.3 And whereas nearly
half of people (48%) in 1998 felt the government was upholding high standards in public life, this fell to 35% at the time of Blair’s resignation – not a
total collapse, but certainly a significant fall.4 There was undoubtedly much
greater awareness among the general public of the packaging of politics –or
more commonly spin – than there was in the 1990s. Quotes such as the one
below from MORI’s qualitative research over this period suggest how suspicious the public became, and how difficult it will be for future prime ministers to rebuild public trust in government:
Everything – there’s spin on it. Even when you don’t think it has got spin, it’s
got spin on it.5
One observable trend during the Blair decade was that as the delivery of
public services came to the front of political debate, and with the media
as much as the official Opposition acting as chief inquisitor, statistics
12 Interview with the Sunday Times, March 2007.
13 ONS Survey 2005.
14 Ipsos MORI survey of 961 adults,11–13 May, 2007.
15 Participant in MORI focus group, September 2004, quoted in ‘Who Do You Believe?’ a
MORI report of 2005.
about the performance of public services and the achievement of
promised targets for delivery became highly contested. Crime figures
were particular examples of this, with discrepancies between recorded
crime and figures from the British Crime Survey used by the opposition
and the media to score points. A leader article from the Daily Mail in the
run-up to the 2005 election illustrates this approach:
He (Blair) blithely brushes aside his own official evidence and seizes on quite
separate figures to assert that violent crime is down. Confused? You’re meant
to be. Manipulating statistics to muddy the waters is a New Labour speciality.
Indeed the Blair years saw widespread general concerns about the nature
of political life in Britain, triggered by the fact that turnout in general
elections tumbled. The most relevant comparison here is with 1992, since
Blair’s influence was already acting in the electoral sphere in his 1997
victory before he had taken office as Prime Minister. At the 1992 general
election, 78% of the electorate went to the polls; in 2001 and 2005
turnout had fallen almost by a quarter, to 59% and 61% respectively.
It is almost irresistible to compare the 35% of the electorate that Neil
Kinnock lost with in 1992 and the 36% of Blair’s third victory thirteen
years later. Widespread disengagement with the politics as practised by
both main parties was evident, despite the fact that interest in politics per
se was virtually unchanged at around six in ten of the public – ever since
the 1970s (Figure 20.13)!
Falling turnout was the tip of the iceberg of a wider phenomenon of
falling political participation: Blair left political party membership much
lower in 2007 than in 1997, but this may be misleading, since membership in 1997 was inflated by a temporary boost in Labour membership
tied into popular enthusiasm for the first Blair government, and this conceals a less dramatic but much longer-term trend. Most significant was
the falling number of activists available to the parties on the ground,
whether fighting national or local elections, and the ageing profile of
those who remained. This is not in any sense a consequence of the Blair
government, although his efforts to reverse this decline had little impact,
and participation in the new elections that Blair created – various referenda over devolution and for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh
Assembly, and in the Mayoral elections in London – did not see a surge in
political participation either. One is left feeling that personal contact
between party campaigners and voters, which research shows is still one
of the strongest predictors of turnout, may simply be an option that was
no longer available to the campaign planners except on a much smaller
Q How interested would you say you are in politics?
% Not particularly/at all interested
% Very/fairly interested
June 1973
–40
60
Mar 1991
–39
60
Apr 1997
–40
59
May 2001
–40
59
Apr 2005
–39
61
Figure 20.13. Interest in politics over time
Base: c. 2,000 British/UK adults 18ϩ. Source: MORI/JRRT/Electoral Commission,
Times, FT
and more concentrated scale, with campaigns fought hard in marginal
seats, and voters in the rest feeling neglected.
Public services
Billions spent, but what did the public notice? Blair promised to dramatically improve, modernise and above all ‘reform’ public services, in particular education and the NHS. He promised to be tough on crime and its
causes. His track record was decidedly mixed, although how much he
personally can be held responsible for this is unclear.
Taking each of these services in turn, in some ways education was
Blair’s biggest success story in terms of public opinion, where by putting
in some universal targets and initiatives like the literacy hour, as well as
investment, overall public concern about the area fell markedly. During
the Blair years parental satisfaction with their children’s schools generally
rose in MORI’s local surveys for hundreds of individual councils,
although there was little comprehension of the Academy programme
(Figure 20.14).
At the same time attainment rose and then plateaued – and there
remained deep class divides in terms of attainment and expectation, as a
survey commissioned for the Sutton Trust towards the end of Blair’s term
confirmed, with the social background of children’s parents still impacting massively on their expectations of future attainment. In 2006, for
example only 4% of upper middle-class parents (AB) believed their own
&nb
sp;
Q What do you see as the main/other important issues facing
Britain today?
Howard
Cameron
Blair
becomes
becomes
announces
Labour’s second term–Tory Leader
Tory Leader
departure
50
Introduction of
pledge to improve failing
means-tested
secondary schools
City academies
introduced to combat
Education and
tuition fees
40
entrenched failure in
Inspections Bill limits
some urban schools
the power of LAs to
open new schools
30
20
Fuel
Protests
London
10
Bombs
0
May
May
May
May
May
May
May
May
May
May
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
Figure 20.14. Concern about education
Base: c. 1,000 British adults each month age 18ϩ
child would finish their academic career only with GCSEs, compared to
25% among working class (DE) parents.
In contrast, on the key issue of the National Health Service, at least in
terms of public opinion, Blair saw initial recognition of success fall apart,
following the 2005 general election. He seemed to regard this as an
inevitable stage of reform, but at the time he left office, public pessimism
about the future of the NHS was higher than at any point in his tenure,
and for the first time in polling history the Conservatives were seen as
having better policies on the NHS than Labour, despite being fairly circumspect about what these policies were (Figure 20.15).
News of ward closures, redundancies and cut backs following the measures needed to avert a repeated NHS deficit were to blame. At the time of
Brown’s National Insurance rises in 2002, more people expected an
improvement than a decline (net score of ϩ14%) in health services in
Britain. By the time Blair left most expected the NHS to get worse (net
score of Ϫ30%) – with 16% of the population expecting the NHS to get
‘much worse’.6
Ironically, given the rise in NHS spending, the biggest public concerns
about the NHS remained a lack of resources and investment, linked to a