understands us . . . it’s like when Kennedy dawned on the politics of
America’.
However, as the grim realities of governing got in the way, it was hard
for the increasingly mistrustful general public to see Blair’s fraternising
as anything other than a highly polished marketing campaign. Even
by March 1998, the NME had accused Labour spin-doctors of stealing
British culture and repackaging it ‘under a brand name’. Jarvis Cocker
said: ‘It would have been better had the Tories won the election.’ The
invasion of Iraq saw many of those celebrities who had been so lavishly
entertained at Downing Street take to the stage in protest.
But Blair’s flirtations with celebrity culture were only a symptom of a
trend that came to dominate many aspects of British popular culture. Big
Brother first came onto British TV in the summer of 2000 and quickly
caught the public’s imagination; around sixteen million votes were cast
throughout the second series shown in 2001 – only ten million fewer than
bothered to turn out and vote in the election that same year. Clearly, the
popularity contest that was taking place inside Elstree was as important
to many as the one at Westminster. Celebrity has always been with us, of
course, but the ‘democratisation’ of celebrity was distinctive under Blair.
The growth of reality television over this period presented viewers with
people like themselves, who, regardless of whether they had any kind of
talent, had their fifteen minutes of fame at worst, or became millionaires.
And, given that over the past decade events internationally were, at times,
simply extraordinary, is it any wonder the British began to relish
mundane escapism?
Of course, this change in the nature of celebrity and our shift in aspirations cannot be attributable to Tony Blair. Instead, it is more a result of the
proliferation of media channels, the ongoing digital revolution, and the
constant and unremitting self-reference that this allows, as well as the
ongoing decline of deference. But Blair can be seen as part of this preoccupation with appearance and presentation. After Blair’s resignation speech
Gordon Brown was quick to differentiate himself by stating that ‘we’re
moving from this period when celebrity matters . . . people are wanting the
concerns that they have discussed in a rounded way’ – although shortly after
making this statement he himself decided to appear on primetime TV to
present an award for the ‘Greatest Briton Ever’, and had already been drawn
into the debate over Jade Goody’s remarks on Big Brother the previous year.
Going green?
Blair leaves office with it clear that climate change is under way and
public concern starting to reflect this. His decade saw an unprecedented
Q What do you see as the main/other important issues facing Britain
today? – pollution/environment
EC proposes
carbon emission
cuts of 20% by
2020
Howard
Cameron
Blair
becomes
becomes announces
Tory leader
Tory leader departure
20
Wettest autumn since records
Cameron’s
began – widespread flooding
‘Vote Blue, go
across the UK
Green’
Stern
15
campaign at
report
2006 local
elections
Buncefield Oil Depot fire –
10
toxic cloud reaches northern
Spain
5
Hurricane in
Kensal Rise
9/11
London
0
bombs
May
May
May
May
May
May
May
May
May
May
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
Figure 20.22. Issues Facing Britain: Environment
Base: c. 1,000 British adults each month age 18ϩ. Source: Ipos MORI
growth in environmental debate, regulation and awareness in Britain. It
was established on the agendas of Whitehall, town halls, boardrooms,
newsrooms and schools throughout the country – and a number of government-supported organisations were established to promote environmental behaviour to consumers (WRAP) and business (Carbon Trust).
However, the change can easily be overstated, and Blair’s influence was by
no means clear-cut (Figure 20.22).
The only time the British public rated ‘the environment’ as the single
most important issue facing Britain was in 1989, when 35% said they
were concerned about it. For most of the Blair years, fewer than one
in ten people saw it as crucial and it was only towards the end of the
Blair decade that it really took off, even then sitting well below concerns
around crime or immigration. In March 2007, despite Al Gore’s
Inconvenient Truth being one of the biggest grossing documentaries ever,
despite a blizzard of media coverage, despite rapid increases in recycling
and local recycling policy being a key issue in the local elections of 2007,
most people in Britain said they were doing nothing about it personally
(Figure 20.23).
Q1 What is the number one thing you are doing to tackle climate change?
Top 10 mentions
Don’t know/nothing
59%
Recycle/recycling
23%
Low-energy light bulbs
5%
Save/use less energy
3%
Any effort: 41%
Save electricity/switch off appliances
2%
Don’t use/less use of car
2%
Switch off lights 1%
Turn down heating
1%
Loft/home insulation 1%
Change car/get more fuel-1%
efficient car/smaller car
Figure 20.23. Effort to tackle climate change
Base: 2,130 British adults, 9–15 and 23–29 March 2007
Admittedly when the public were asked what was happening on a
global scale it was far more prominent – but terrorism still outstripped
global warming by a considerable margin (40% vs 23%) in 2007.
Nevertheless, even if public opinion only shifted towards the end of his
term in office there were some real shifts in public behaviour – nearly
always more due to coercion than persuasion. To take one example: the
volume of recycling in Britain increased dramatically. This is mainly
thanks to concerted efforts by local authorities, Blair’s government and
the EU – and crucially did not depend on ‘winning hearts and minds’.
Another key issue was Congestion Charging. While one of Blair’s many
volte-faces was over the competence of Ken Livingstone as Mayor of
&n
bsp; London, Livingstone was, once elected, given the space to lead the way on
one of the largest road charging schemes in the world and then be
returned to office with 55% of Londoners giving him their first or second
preference votes in 2004, and outright hostility to the charge switched
round to grudging acceptance.
There were marked shifts in consumer trends. As Blair left office fair
trade, ethical, cruelty-free, organic and such products were quite the
thing, with many succeeding despite their premium pricing. But it is hard
to discern a distinctive Blair effect in this – much of the change is the evolution of existing trends. In the late 1980s, ‘green’ brands and products
sprang up quickly – but many of them carried the burden of higher prices
and the perception of inferior quality. Only gradually did this perception
change and they became fashionable – witness celebrities driving Toyota
Prius cars.
So what has been ‘the Blair effect’ in this area in the last decade? In one
sense Blair’s policies on the environment were deeply contradictory –
despite overwhelming evidence of its impact, he saw no reason why his
own or anyone else’s flights should be strictly limited, and presided over a
massive growth in air travel by Middle England. But the pursuit of selfmade, self-reliant, self-determining ‘Mondeo Man’ voters had gone
hand-in-hand with a far more collectivist approach (of which environmental legislation is one product), albeit more slowly than any of the
experts in climate change might have liked.
Conclusions
Overall, Blair was as much shaped by events and public opinion as
shaping them. Despite the accusations over spin, despite disappointment
over the war and public services, more people gave him the benefit of the
doubt, and if they knew how publics in other major countries felt, might
have been more charitable. One can argue about the effectiveness of his
reform and investment policy in public services, regret the missed opportunities, but from the point of view of the public at large, there was a
feeling that he, more than any of his predecessors in office, benefited
them personally.
21
Higher education
’
Higher education provides one of the enduring mysteries of Tony Blair’s
10 years in office. Why, when his mantra of ‘education, education, education’ focused so tightly on schools and nurseries, did he risk the future of
his administration on a half-hearted reform of university funding?
Whether through misjudgement, stubbornness or genuine radicalism,
his proposals for top-up fees came closer than foundation hospitals,
trust schools, or even the war in Iraq to bringing a premature end to his
premiership.
In his resignation speech at Trimdon Labour Club, Blair recalled the
introduction of £3,000 undergraduate tuition fees as ‘deeply controversial and hellish hard to do’ although he insisted that he had been ‘moving
with the grain of change around the world’.1 Yet, for most of his time in
office universities took a back seat to more pressing educational concerns,
as successive public spending settlements demonstrated. Indeed, the
shorthand of ‘schools and hospitals’, used in later years to underline the
government’s priorities, was probably a more accurate reflection of
reality than the more familiar ‘education, education, education’.
Fees were a recurring theme of the Blair years, however. They were
high on the new Prime Minister’s agenda after the 1997 general election,
when the main parties had been happy to ‘park’ the question of how to
pay for the much-expanded and increasingly expensive university system
by commissioning Sir Ron (subsequently Lord) Dearing to chair a higher
education inquiry.2 The subsequent report made 93 recommendations
on subjects as diverse as academic pay to the machinery of quality assurance, but is (mis)remembered almost exclusively for recommending the
end of ‘free’ higher education.
11 Resignation speech, Trimdon Labour Club, Sedgefield, 10 May 2007.
12 Higher Education in the Learning Society, The National Committee of Inquiry into Higher
Education, July 1997. ISBN: 1 85838 253 X.
In fact, although Dearing wanted graduates to meet part of the cost of
full-time higher education when they could afford it, the recommendation was coupled with the restoration of grants for those from lowincome families. David Blunkett, the Education Secretary throughout
Blair’s first term in office, quietly buried key parts of the package under
pressure from the Treasury. Up-front fees of £1,000 a year were duly
imposed, without grants but with less resistance than many had expected
from Labour MPs. This may have been at least partly because meanstesting ensured that a minority of students would be charged the full
amount and many others would pay nothing at all. But that easy ride
through the Commons may have sown the seeds of subsequent miscalculations over fees.
Labour’s inheritance
Universities were never convinced that they received the full value of
the new fee income following adjustments to their block grant, but the
injection of cash allowed ministers to begin to reverse more than a decade
of cuts in funding per student. There was plenty to reverse: annual
‘efficiency gains’ combined with sharp growth in student numbers had
seen unit funding for full-time students drop by 36% between 1989 and
1997.3 The student population had more than doubled in that time, as the
polytechnics were first released from local authority control and then
allowed to become universities in 1992. Student maintenance grants were
gradually reduced and replaced by loans, albeit at a zero real rate of interest.There had been other important reforms, such as the establishment of
external quality assurance, but the Tory years were remembered in universities largely for budget cuts and underfunded expansion.
There could hardly be a more authoritative picture of the higher education system inherited by the incoming Labour government than that
recorded in the 2,000-page Dearing Report. The committee noted that
‘almost all’ public funding for capital expenditure had ceased in 1993 and
a cap placed on any further growth in the number of undergraduates.
Further reductions in unit costs would be required to meet Conservative
spending plans. ‘The concern now is that short-term pressures to reduce
costs, in conditions of no growth, may damage the intrinsic quality of the
learning experience which underpins the quality of UK awards.’4
3 The Future of Higher Education, Cm. 5735, January 2003, p. 18.
4 Dearing Report, summary report, p. 11.
’
Dearing concluded that UK higher education could take ‘justifiable
pride’ in extending opportunities to 1.6 million students while maintaining its international standing in research, innovating in teaching and
learning, and becoming more cost-effective. But the proportion of GDP
devote
d to higher education remained low and he warned of an imminent funding gap of more than £500 million with a backlog of essential
capital work amounting to some £9 billion.5 In short (which the Dearing
Report was not), Labour was inheriting an overstretched higher education sector that was in urgent need of renewal. The process of transformation from an elite to a mass system was taking place in a haphazard
manner, as universities adjusted to constantly changing signals from the
Treasury and the Education Department.
Ministerial teams
Dearing’s 93 recommendations landed on the desks of David Blunkett
and his Higher Education Minister, Baroness (formerly Tessa)
Blackstone, until the 1997 election Master of Birkbeck College London.
As an insider, she was a popular choice in universities and, like her boss,
she served the whole of Blair’s first parliament. But, though Blunkett’s
preoccupation with primary education left his formidable understudy
with a largely free rein, the low priority given to universities restricted the
scope for innovation. The first term in higher education was mainly
about fire-fighting, from the implementation of tuition fees to battles
over Oxbridge.
The second term was altogether more turbulent for higher education
policy, as for other areas of education. Although Blunkett was succeeded
by another schools specialist in Estelle Morris, higher education had
become more of a concern in Downing Street. With Margaret Hodge a
combative force as Higher Education Minister, the new team appeared
less sure-footed than its predecessor. It was to last less than two years,
although this rather than the Blunkett/Blackstone marathon stint was
nearer the norm for post-war education ministers of all parties.
Blair’s third ministerial pairing was by far the most active in higher education. Charles Clarke arrived as Education Secretary in mid-negotiation
on the introduction of top-up fees but, as a former president of the
National Union of Students and briefly as a higher education consultant,
he had a confidence that many previous holders of his office lacked in
15 Dearing Report, main report, p. 269.
dealing with university issues. Alan Johnson, his Higher Education
Minister, could scarcely have had a more different background, having left
school at 15. In a parliamentary party packed with graduates, the lack of
any contact with universities was expected to count against him, but a
BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007 Page 74