Fruits of his Labor

The halo that followed British Prime Minister Tony Blair in his early days of office has disappeared, giving way to the realities of modern Britain. But despite the challenges, Blair and his Labor Party appear poised to stand the test of time.

By DIANE ROBERTS

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 23, 2000

LONDON -- At the time of the last British general election, in the spring of 1997, Tony Blair was the golden boy of Western politics. Under his leadership, the Labor Party ran a fine (some said brilliant) campaign and won in an avalanche of popular support. Labor gained an unprecedented majority of 179 seats in Parliament and a sense of invincibility. Blair himself rode high in the opinion polls, some of which put his popularity at a staggering 80 percent.

The honeymoon seemed to go on and on. The country was dubbed "Cool Britannia," as rock 'n' roll guys and Spice Girls hung out at No. 10 Downing St., interest rates stayed low and profits high, and the fresh-faced young Cabinet (nobody older than 45) promised "modernization" of everything from nursery schools to the House of Lords. New Labor revamped the party's old socialist platform to embrace privatization and entrepreneurship, even managing the Clintonian trick of reforming welfare while insisting on their deep compassion for and commitment to the poor.

But surely even the ever-smiling, ever-confident Tony Blair can't keep the nation starry-eyed forever. With the next election about a year away, there are rumblings of discontent, a cooling of Cool Britannia toward its earnest guitar-playing prime minister. "The shine is definitely dimming," says Jonathan Freedland, political columnist for The Guardian newspaper. "There's no great crisis, but Labor had such an unbelievable lead in the polls for so long, they had nowhere to go but down. I'd say things are getting back to normal."

After an initial smooth and speedy run of popular policies combined with good luck, Blair now finds himself hitting a series of potholes. The state-run National Health Service, which has been providing free medical and surgical care to Britons since 1946, has been the subject of almost-weekly scandals, with waiting lists for serious cancer treatments and vital operations, and some coronary patients dying for lack of trained heart specialists. The NHS, starved under Margaret Thatcher, the enemy of "socialized medicine," thought a Labor government would spend enough money to fix everything. But for three years Labor pleaded fiscal austerity and refused to shell out for doctors and hospitals.

The troubles in Northern Ireland looked like they might be ending when Blair, with a little help from Bill Clinton and George Mitchell, put together a power-sharing government that included both Ulster Unionists and Sinn Fein. But this has now collapsed over the IRA's refusal to even discuss disarmament. Over the past couple of weeks, nationalist "punishment beatings" and loyalist "warning shots" have escalated, and a dissident IRA group set off a bomb at a British army barracks.

Blair's government, which has enjoyed a low unemployment rate, also faces huge job losses in manufacturing. BMW, German owners of the venerable British car company Rover, are selling the Rover plant, leaving 50,000 laid-off auto workers in the West Midlands, an area once called "the workshop of the world." The trade unions, the backbone of old Labor, feel betrayed. Graham Corbett, a union official, says that while "no one harbored illusions things would be perfect under a Labor government, there is a strong sense that Blair isn't delivering." He points out that when government ministers visited the endangered Rover plant to show their concern, no meetings were scheduled with shop stewards -- evidence, Corbett says, "that they've forgotten their roots."

For its part, BMW blames the high pound and Britain's current reluctance to enter into the single European currency. This, in turn, has ignited an ugly row over sovereignty, which the opposition Conservatives are trying to exploit.

The NHS, Northern Ireland and the fall-off in manufacturing are problems Blair inherited. Others he created. Both the left and the right charge that Blair's much-touted "reforms" don't add up to much. The new Freedom of Information Act, the first in the country's history, contains so many exceptions for "national security" that critics say it's virtually meaningless. The restoration of parliaments in Scotland and Wales demonstrates, according to Labor, a radical rethink of the United Kingdom, though vexing questions remain. Scottish members of Parliament, or MPs, can vote on issues relating to England, but English MPs can no longer vote on bills that substantially affect Scotland.

What is probably the most heralded of Blair's constitutional "modernizations," the revamping of the House of Lords, has gotten off to a shaky start. It used to be that anyone born to a title had a right to sit in the upper house, which could impede or reject legislation generated by the elected House of Commons. Consequently, the Conservatives had a vast majority in the Lords. Now Blair has forced most of the hereditary peers out, making the chamber theoretically more equal. Yet all members are still appointed, not elected. Jonathan Freedland is not impressed: "The House of Lords should be abolished. It is becoming impaled on its own contradictions."

Fred Ponsonby, 4th Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede and a Labor hereditary peer, readily concedes that the Lords cannot be called democratic "since nobody votes us in." But he defends the institution and Blair's gradualism. Lord Ponsonby points out that the upper chamber is full of people with "real-world expertise, people with lives outside politics," and that Blair has introduced fundamental change: "We now have a house in which no single party dominates. That's healthy."

Indeed, the House of Lords has often defied the government of the day, since it is not beholden to big contributors or party bosses. But charges that Blair has packed the Lords with his cronies persist, and one new member, chosen by Conservative leader William Hague, has people calling out for more fundamental alterations. Businessman Michael Ashcroft has been Conservative Party treasurer and a contributor of millions to the party for years, though he lives mostly in Florida and Belize. He has been associated with all sorts of financial dirty dealings, yet William Hague, who is allowed to name a certain number of peers, insisted he be "elevated." Dr. E.H.H. Green, fellow in modern history at Oxford and author of The Crisis of Conservatism, says Ashcroft's peerage "only serves to bring the Tories into further disrepute."

Conservative ineptitude could count as part of Blair's run of good fortune. At the time of the last election, the British economy was booming, but, as in the 1992 presidential election, voters seemed disinclined to give the party in power much credit. Then-Prime Minister John Major was an uninspiring character, presiding over a party riven by internal dissent and public scandals. Tory members of Parliament got nailed for accepting bribes from rich cronies to raise "helpful" issues in debate; worse still, a "Back to Basics" campaign against "moral degeneracy" blew up in Major's face when Cabinet ministers kept getting photographed with call girls or caught fathering illegitimate children.

The state the Conservatives currently find themselves in is certainly, in relative terms, better. Though the Ashcroft peerage has raised the old cries of "Tory sleaze," as E.H.H. Green puts it, "They have nowhere to go but up."

The party in power is supposed to experience a marked slump in the polls at this point in its term, benefitting the opposition. Yet the Conservatives have not managed to capitalize on Labor's problems to any great degree. They won a Scottish Parliamentary election in March, which was remarkable because support for the Conservatives in Scotland has recently hovered between 10 percent and 15 percent for more than 20 years. They are also expected to do well in May's local council elections (in American terms these council seats are like a cross between county commissioner and state legislator), especially in areas such as the West Midlands where there real disillusionment with Labor.

So far, however, little momentum has been generated. William Hague often scores points on Tony Blair in debate and has mounted a campaign to galvanize Middle England with his implacable opposition to the euro and xenophobic hostility to the thousands of refugees coming to Britain from Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and elsewhere. In addition, the Tories plan a million-pound series of ads leading up to next year's election, trying to bring last time's swing voters -- traditional Conservative supporters who "experimented" with Tony Blair in 1997 -- back home.

The campaign features a character who would probably be called a "soccer mom" in the United States, a middle-class 30-something with a job, a mortgage and a family who feels over-taxed. She dreams of yearly vacations at Disney World, maybe even a time-share in a Clearwater condo, and wants a bright future for her children, but fears Labor has abandoned her. Hague kicked off this campaign by making a series of speeches arguing that high taxes were "immoral" on the grounds that they kept people from realizing their goals, giving to charity, and teaching their children that hard work brings rewards.

Nationally, Hague's new philosophy of low taxes leading to virtuous behavior is winning few converts. Hague, like George W. Bush, has found that people aren't really that upset over their taxes. There was little outcry even when Tony Blair was forced to admit that the general tax burden had gone up slightly under Labor. E.H.H. Green says Hague's tax mantra "is a bit rich, considering taxes went up 52 times under Thatcher and Major." Now the Conservatives "are simply going back to their core issue of more money for business. The question is, will it matter come the next general election?"

The answer seems to be no. Green says "Blair is still fundamentally quite popular, even though the halo is tarnished a little bit." Jonathan Freedland concurs, pointing out that Blair, while officially pro-European Union "has the sense to back off the extremely unpopular euro." Moreover, says Freedland, Blair is "not a radical by nature, and so managed the devolution of Scotland and Wales partially and cautiously" in a way that did not spook the voters in England.

Though the Conservatives are anti-devolution, anti-European and anti-tax, they seem to get nowhere in the polls. Union official Graham Corbett compares William Hague to the last Labor Party leader, the "perpetual loser" Neil Kinnock: "He has an impossible task, faced with Tony Blair. People simply won't vote for him." Labor may be slipping a bit but the Tories aren't gaining. The real beneficiaries of Labor's midterm discontent may be the Liberal Democrats and still-smaller parties such as the Greens.

An interesting test of Labor's strength in rich, crowded London will come on May 4 when, for the first time, the city votes for a mayor. The Labor candidate, former Cabinet minister Frank Dobson, looks to get clobbered by the much-loved "Red" Ken Livingstone, a radical MP who has just been expelled from the Labor Party for refusing to give up his independent mayoral campaign. Meanwhile, Steven Norris, the Conservative candidate, should have been able to profit from Labor's embarrassing split, but he is doomed to be forever associated with "Tory sleaze." During the Back to Basics campaign, which he loudly supported, he got caught having affairs (and children) with five women simultaneously. He is expected to come in a distant third.

In May, Tony Blair will take what he calls "limited" paternity leave to help his wife Cherie with their newborn. Despite unending frustration with the Ulster peace process, the strong pound, the floods of asylum seekers and a National Health Service that continues to have well-publicized problems, Blair looks certain to win a second term. Labor will surely lose some seats, but it would have to be in meltdown to squander 179. "The first flush of triumph may be gone," says Lord Ponsonby, "but the government is seen by most people as getting on with a difficult job."

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