Dear Matthew,
It falls to me to make the first moves in this on-page wrestling bout to
contest whether the Blair premiership has been a glorious success or
ignominious failure. So let me emerge from the unfashionable left-of-centre
corner clutching an updated copy of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de
Bergerac, in which Cyrano anticipates all the insulting epithets that
may be or have been hurled at him on account of his unusually large hooter.
To start with a theme, the departing Prime Minister is Bliar, the mendacious,
spin-obsessed, manipulating fraudster who lied to take us to war, undermined
our independent civil service, took cash from the rich and rewarded them
with peerages and favourable decisions, and suborned our politics.
This Blair is also, at best a naive, messianic prating fool when it comes to
foreign entanglement, a US poodle, or at worst a war criminal who has done
huge damage to international law and world peace.
At home he has been the ignorer of Parliament, the trampler on our ancient
liberties, the CCTV and ASBO king, the grinning, malign Mary Poppins of the
supernanny state.
Personally he is Phoney Tony, a vacuous actor with the Dome as his
exemplifying monument, a freebooter, a lover of foreign trips to celebrity
hideouts owned by other members of the Cool Britannia Delusionary Roadshow.
Even where he might claim some credit he has in fact been a Clintonian
disappointment, with vast sums of money thrown at public services to no very
good result. True, some agree that he has been nice to gays and blacks but,
as Michael Portillo recently put it: “Our schools are a disgrace, our
hospitals shameful, our public transport a bad joke and our public spaces
depressing. At night our streets are filled with the yelling and puking of
foul-mouthed youths and their obese girlfriends.”
And, Matthew, since the polls show that this is what most people think, it
must be true.
I take the ring with nothing but the record to fall back upon, the facts of
what has really happened since 1997, in schools, on the streets, in
hospitals, in our thinking about the environment, in action over Third World
debt and African misery. My hope is to get you to agree that in truth
Britain is, in so far as any government had the power to make it so, a
better country for having had Tony Blair as its Prime Minister.
Yours, David.
Dear David,
It is good of you to set out in such a spirited manner the charges against
Tony Blair, but I must remind you that your task is not simply to
demonstrate familiarity with the complaints, but to answer them. I shall
try.
“Bliar, the mendacious, spin-obsessed, manipulating fraudster who lied to take
us to war, undermined our independent civil service, took cash from the rich
and rewarded them with peerages and favourable decisions, and suborned our
politics” you say? You go too far, David. He’s less interesting than that.
Mr Blair has cut a smaller, meaner figure. It’s not the big lies but the
grubby little half-truths that are so depressing.
“Emphatically not – I did not authorise the leaking of the name of David
Kelly,” said the Prime Minister to journalists on a plane over China, after
Dr Kelly’s suicide. No – not a lie. Not quite. In fact Mr Blair had taken
part in a meeting at which it had been decided to let Kelly’s identity
“emerge” without ever actually saying his name. What a creep.
To the Iraq war later. As for spin, enough has been said. All politicians spin
to some degree. Churchill did. Disraeli did. Thatcher did. We forget the
spinning when it has accompanied the achievement of great purposes; and
these we remember. It is because Mr Blair’s work has been so unsolid, so
bereft of any real sense of direction, that we obsess about the surrounding
spin. When the picture’s blank, you do tend to look at the cheap faux-gilt
frame.
And I could forgive the pushing around of civil servants (Mrs Thatcher did it)
if it had been to do anything beyond treading water prettily. Nor did Mr
Blair invent the linkage between cash and peerages, any more than he
invented the greasing of palms in overseas arms deals: what disgusts is all
the breast-beating about purity, the noisy enactment of legislation to
“reform” party donations and “outlaw” corrupt foreign deals, then the
sidestepping of both new laws. It is this curious disjunction between the
world of ideas and the world of actions that has led me to ask whether Mr
Blair may actually have a screw loose. Kinder souls just accuse him of
hypocrisy.
You conclude by inviting me to agree that Britain has improved while Mr Blair
has been Prime Minister. I agree readily. It’s the causal link with which
I’m having trouble.
Yours ever, Matthew. PS: You’re not in the “unfashionable left-of-centre
corner”. You’re in the until-lately super-fashionable New Labour Third Way
corner. Anyway we all have our spells in the wilderness. Mine lasted from
1994 to the Iraq war: a time when Tony Blair was believed to be real.
Dear Matthew,
First, on your postscript: let’s agree that you too have suffered. Then allow
me to recapitulate your argument. Mr Blair is a barmy creep who has done
nasty little bad things, failing even to commit larger sins.
These sneaky transgressions might have been excusable if he had done anything
substantial, but he hasn’t – and even if he has, they weren’t his things,
they were inherited from the unlucky John Major or someone else did them. I
don’t think I’ve missed anything out.
Certainly I can see why, as a supporter of Major – two members of whose
political hierarchy were imprisoned for perjury – you should regard Mr
Blair’s crimes as insufficiently epic. But more of those another time.
Rather let me head straight for your claim that Mr Blair hasn’t changed
anything for the better. In 1997, after nearly two decades of Conservative
rule, 43 per cent and 46 per cent of primary schoolchildren failed to
achieve the average standards expected in maths and English respectively.
Those figures are now 21 per cent and 24 per cent, and the primary schools
that have done best are those in the poorest areas. One legacy of the Blair
years will be new school buildings. Look around you.
In ’97 it was not unheard of for patients to wait up to two years for
important orthopaedic operations. In winter there might be a flu crisis in
which thousands of operations had to be cancelled. Child poverty and
pensioner poverty had both increased enormously. No one seriously disputes
that in the last decade waiting times have fallen dialectically and hundreds
of thousands of pensioners and children lifted out of poverty. Rather the
debate now, if one follows David Cameron, is about whether this is enough.
Tell me, Matthew, does no part of you secretly think “Hmmm, not bad”? Or is Mr
Blair somehow innocent of all the credit?
Inquisitively yours, David.
Dear David,
I’m puzzled by your opening remark. Why this sudden attack on John Major? I
don’t recall mentioning him. Take as many shin-kicks at Major as you like,
but then return to your task, which is to make the positive case for Mr
Blair himself.
Himself. His personal contribution to national life. Not that of a Labour
government; not, in particular, the conduct of economic policy, which he
left to Gordon Brown; not the scuppering of plans to join the European
single currency, which Mr Brown achieved despite Mr Blair; not Mr Brown’s
campaign against pensioner and child poverty, in which Mr Blair showed
little sustained interest. No, ask yourself what difference he made.
Well, there’s the four-letter “I” word that we don’t mention. And here at home
there is one big initiative on public services which – I agree with
you – we probably can ascribe to Mr Blair himself. That was the demented
announcement, seemingly impromptu, that bounced the Treasury into what will
prove the near-doubling of expenditure on the NHS in the absence of any
serious plan for meshing this with improvements to efficiency.
The consequence was predictable: efficiency loss. Gentle improvement in the
quality of healthcare combined with a vicious increase in the cost. Here was
a missed opportunity to use the proceeds of economic growth to buy tightly
monitored structural change in a public service. It was blown in pursuit of
one cheap headline. Very Blair.
You’re right, of course: substantial increases in public spending have bought
modest increases in some public services. They always will. But the
impression this decade leaves is neither of triumph nor tragedy but
something smaller, meaner and a bit sad. It is of bold talk followed by
confused action; a relentless focus on politics coupled with a fitful
interest in government; stirring words, ill-considered follow-through, and
an administrative mess. This is Mr Blair’s very personal stamp. It has
cheapened politics in the public imagination.
Yours ever, Matthew.
Dear Matthew,
You are surely straining too hard to be ungenerous here, a bit like Reg of the
Judean People’s Front. I mean, apart from the fast operations, improved
education standards, new schools and falling crime rates, what else has
Blair done for Britain? In time, when this moment of grumpiness has passed,
I suspect that the “impression of the decade” will actually be of wealth,
migration and dynamism, as well as the discovery of new problems. It will be
epitomised by the London bombings and the London Olympics.
Even so, a lot of what you say is true. Too much early time was wasted, reform
was too incremental, there were too may half-arsed populist initiatives.
Paradoxically, the main achievements have probably come during the
misunderstood and reviled twilight years of the Blair reign.
So now let us whip the cover from the elephant. The invasion of Iraq has been
a disaster, maybe even more of a disaster than not invading would have been.
We still don’t know. But then there is the “K” word – what would have
happened in the Balkans without Mr Blair’s determination? And what, Matthew,
do you make of the seven-letter “I” word? Ian Paisley shaking hands with
Martin McGuinness would have been impossible without Mr Blair. Even Reg
would sign up for that. Will you?
Peace and love, David.
Dear David,
Whether invading Iraq was “even more of a disaster than not invading [you say]
we still don’t know.” We do. A disaster, full stop.
Briefly tempted by your conciliatory tone, I contemplated conceding something;
but no, Tony Blair has been a horrible disappointment, there’s something
rotten about his record, and his reputation has further to sink.
But I’ll give you Ireland. Like all confidence-tricksters Mr Blair is a
confidence-builder, and used his slippery arts there with skill.
I will not give you our gentle improvements in prosperity and (some) public
services. Under most governments since 1949 living standards rose, but
epoch-marking personal interventions by particular leaders are less routine.
By Blair there has been one: we both know what. The Iraq debacle was not
even (as he likes to insinuate) a bravely unpopular choice. He thought it
was going to be the popular choice. He joined the gang of the biggest boy in
the playground.
Blairophobes should not by our abuse build Blair up. Beasts have dignity.
Ogres do big things. To convey the unsavoury yet flimsy qualities Mr Blair
has brought to his political decade, we need a smaller word, a playground
word.
It’s “cheat”. Tony Blair leaves, now, like the Cheshire Cat, fading to only a
rictus grin, a mocking laugh and a lingering scent of cat’s pee and cologne.
Yours ever, Matthew.
