Sometimes this column is kind to Tony Blair, but not today. He has a reputation for being good in a crisis but when the crisis is within his own government he performs dreadfully. His handling of the Blunkett case was incompetent, arrogant and hypocritical. He has been damaged and rightly so.
The prime minister’s reaction to Blunkett’s second resignation echoes his comments after his first. When as home secretary Blunkett was caught hastening the immigration procedures for his lover’s nanny, Blair said his integrity was intact. The first time that Peter Mandelson resigned he opined that he had not done “anything wrong or improper” and the second time that he had not behaved “improperly in any way”.
Blair never takes misdeeds in his administration seriously. He rewrites events to clear the way for his pals’ rehabilitation and a swift return to office in government or in a sinecure within Blair’s gift. Clearly Blair does not give a toss for the ministerial code of conduct. He declared that Blunkett’s decision to sell his shares in DNA Bioscience, the company for which he worked for a few days, put an end to the matter. But how could it have done? The issue was whether Blunkett had conformed to the code, which he had not.
If Blunkett’s deal with DNA Bioscience had been something to be proud of, I believe he would have remembered to consult the parliamentary committee that advises former ministers on paid employment. I suspect that the deal would have seemed noisome had it been dragged into the warm sunlight of public scrutiny. That much money for that little work, and during an election campaign, fails the smell test.
The deeper issue is that Blair is content to run a Labour government in which his friend can make a quick killing in salary and shares for few days’ work performed while he is meant to be out campaigning. Is that what people envisaged when they voted Labour? They were sick of sleaze, snouts in the trough and the other crimes of which some Tories (generally insignificant figures) were accused. Blair promised to be whiter than white.
I feel sorry for people who took him seriously. Blair does not enforce the code on his ministers because he fails the tests himself. He finds the lure of money irresistible. He accepted funds for the Labour party from Bernie Ecclestone of Formula One and then excluded the sport from his ban on tobacco advertising. In 2001 Blair wrote to the Romanian government to support a bid for a steel company made by Lakshmi Mittal, after he had also made donations to the party. Cherie Blair has been in hot water for earning large sums, notably in Australia, for speaking about life in No 10. The couple love to take expensive holidays in the homes of rich friends.
One of the causes of sleaze is the example that Blair sets. It is right that we be tough on it. He believes that rules do not apply to him and his chums because they are “pretty straight kind of guys”. Objectively, his standards of conduct regarding financial matters are well below those of Margaret Thatcher and John Major.
Of course, the prime minister is a Houdini. Often before he has found new energy and bounced back. Sometimes events come to his aid. But if Blair is Houdini he is now blindfolded and chained, lying in 6ft of water with the air running out. He may get out, but though we have seen 100 previous feats of escapology we must have our doubts.
To switch the analogy to Peter Pan, prime ministers, like fairies, need people to believe in them. The cabinet is getting fractious. Hilary Benn evidently refused to take promotion to the Department of Work and Pensions. The backbenchers are off the leash. Once discipline is lost it is hard to recover. You cannot get the toothpaste back in the tube.
Blair looks like his idol, Thatcher, in her last months. He expends political capital on peripheral issues, such as deregulating pub opening hours and introducing identity cards. Thatcher was deposed mainly because Tory MPs thought that she was endangering their seats with the poll tax. Labour parliamentarians with slim majorities are not looking forward to Blair’s cuts to invalidity benefit. Like her he has become needlessly provocative. His response to the Iranian president’s despicable remarks about wiping Israel off the map went beyond condemnation. He seemed to look forward to war.
His whole legislative programme is in doubt, except that the Tories might support parts of it. Enemies in the Labour party already compare Blair to the hated Ramsay MacDonald, the one-time Labour prime minister who remained in office for many years leading a “coalition” that was almost wholly Conservative. The comparison is overdone. If David Cameron wins the leadership of the Tories he is hardly likely to cede the position to Blair. Before the Conservatives found Cameron they might have been delighted to be led by the charismatic Blair, but now his transfer value is close to zero.
In fact the Tories can now enjoy the best of both worlds. They will gleefully vote with Blair to cram Conservative schools policy down the throats of an enraged Labour party. But they will find good reasons to vote against increasing the hardship of disabled people, on which the government could well be defeated.
Labour voters can take heart from one thing. The campaign of the other candidate for the Tory leadership, David Davis, is based on a vigorous return to the policies that led to Tory massacres in the last two elections. Under his leadership the Conservatives would remain obsessed with Europe and hell-bent on tax cuts. They would fight the next election on the defensive. Would a Davis government take Britain out of the European Union? What cuts would he make to public services? If Davis wins, Labour wins big.
In the television debate between the Conservative contenders on Thursday, Cameron’s material looked thin. He repeated verbatim lines from his conference speech. Repetition is good, but not if it is caused by having only one thing to say. Davis looked much better than when he spoke to the Tory conference. But if Davis performed better it was evident that Cameron is better. His charisma and optimism did not desert him. He has not succumbed to inventing on the hoof policies that pander to narrow Tory prejudices.
But while Cameron’s performance disappointed his friends and gratified those who think a close race will sell more newspapers, I cannot agree that his approval for downgrading the ecstasy drug from class A to B is a gaffe. Quite the opposite. Cameron was a member of a Commons select committee that made that recommendation. To have backtracked on a finding to which he was signed up would have been crass and would have exposed him to accusations of inconstancy.
He is in any case right. Ecstasy can exceptionally kill but to class it alongside heroin makes the law an ass. I doubt whether it will ruffle the Tory membership, at least not those who have been thinking of voting for him. The “blue rinse” caricature of the Conservative lady member is greatly exaggerated. Many take a worldly view. Among the electorate as a whole Cameron’s stand will go down well. It also chips away at the accusation that he is a policy vacuum.
But that leaves us with one other interested party. Gordon Brown has a difficult hand to play. Until now timidity has held him back. It is quite possible that caution will continue to prevail, giving Blair the chance to slip his chains and struggle back to the surface. Or perhaps having long been goaded for being tentative Brown will snap and launch a putsch. That could plunge Labour into a bitter civil war as the Tories experienced after Thatcher was deposed.
He should keep his nerve. We have reached a point where people feel contempt for the government but do not yet trust the opposition. The longer Blair goes on the more people will long for change. When Brown takes over, that yearning will be largely satisfied. Although Cameron is the best thing to happen to the Tories for years, he may need eight years in opposition to flesh out.
I have low expectations of Brown’s premiership. But at least since his rich friend Geoffrey Robinson left government Brown has shown little of Blair’s weakness for bling. He must commit himself to unsullied government. The public might then get what it voted for, a decade after Blair promised it.
