BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007
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imbued with the notion that Britain’s interests dictated that it worked
closely with Washington at all costs, and refrain from criticising in public.
Blair made some headway with Bush on climate change and Africa, but
little on the conduct of the Iraq War, or the Middle East Peace Process. He
did not bargain or suggest his support was conditional. Too often, he was
thus taken for granted.
Why did he not achieve more earlier on? Blair was still young when he
became Prime Minister, aged only forty-three, and he had never served as
a government minister. Neither had his most senior colleagues. He had
no idea how to run a government, and thought he could run it as he had
the Labour Party from 1994 to 1997: heavy on communication, light on
policy and process. He was forced to appoint a number of Labour Party
figures, such as Frank Dobson to Health, whose politics were anathema to
him. When from 1999 he was able to promote his own figures more, he
was restricted by the lack of able Blairites. Shortly after the 2001 general
election, he told the four Secretaries of State appointed to his four
top priority departments, Alan Milburn at Health, Stephen Byers at
Transport, David Blunkett at the Home Office and Estelle Morris at
Education, that he wanted to keep them there for the full second term.
None survived. Mandelson proved unsteady, as did another Blairite,
Stephen Byers. It was indicative that as his government ended in June
2007, there were only three ‘Blairite’ reforming ministers in major
departments: John Reid at the Home Office, John Hutton at Work and
Pensions and Andrew Adonis at Education, and the last was only a junior
minister.
Blair’s first significant appointment after he was elected party leader in
July 1994 was hugely indicative. It was not a policy chief, as most leaders
would have chosen, but a media chief, Alastair Campbell. He did not
appoint a policy supremo until after he arrived in No. 10, and then
selected a young lightweight in terms of understanding Whitehall, David
Miliband, who was never a full Blairite. His economic adviser, Derek
Scott, was not a figure to match the heavy artillery around Brown and in
the Treasury.
Domestically, Blair’s premiership only began to take off in 2001, after a
critical mass of like-minded figures coalesced in No. 10: Adonis on education, Simon Stevens on health, Jeremy Heywood as principal private
secretary and John Birt as his ‘blue skies’ thinker operating across domestic policy. Adonis, Miliband’s successor as policy chief, was to become the
most influential figure on Blair domestically (as Jonathan Powell was to
be on foreign and Northern Ireland policy). More than anyone, Adonis
was responsible for helping Blair define his ‘choice and diversity’ agenda.
But the second term was handicapped by a weak manifesto in 2001 and a
lack of thinking beforehand in the run-up to the election. It was hard for
Adonis, Stevens and Heywood to devise policy on the hoof, especially
when only three months into his second term came 9/11. Dealing with
Afghanistan and the build-up of the Iraq War took much of Blair’s attention from late 2001 to early 2003, and the war and its aftermath took
much of his political capital subsequently. Determined to avoid the mistakes of his first and second terms, in 2004 he appointed Milburn and Birt
separately to help devise the third-term strategy, a fissiparous process
which nevertheless resulted in the 2005 manifesto being the most detailed
and ‘programmatic’ of the three. With his mind at last clear about what
he wanted, with a strong No. 10 and some effective ministers running
departments, he was able to drive policy through in 2005–7, despite
repeated attempts from the Brown camp to destabilise him.
Blair should be seen in history as Labour’s most successful party leader.
The fact that in his last few months in power both Gordon Brown and
David Cameron came to embrace much of his public service reform
agenda is highly significant But for the Iraq War, he might have been considered one of the great prime ministers, on a par with Attlee and
Thatcher. The irony is that Iraq saw him at his most courageous (some
thought intransigent) and principled. To the end he maintained that his
decisions were in Britain’s interests. Given his character and beliefs, the
Iraq War had a certain inevitability about it. Had he not taken those decisions, he would not have been the man that he was. One can only judge
Blair as he was, and Iraq was the authentic Blair.
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