TONY BLAIR can now plan for the rest of his time in 10 Downing Street. And he must do so if his premiership is not to splutter out. The decisive French and Dutch votes on the EU constitution have both created an acute problem over the Union and given him greater freedom of manoeuvre.
The threat of a referendum next year which might have ended his premiership has been lifted. So, with one bound, is Teflon Tony free? Not quite. One uncertainty may have disappeared, but all the questions remain about when and how Mr Blair goes. The patience of the Gordon Brown camp is far from infinite.
There is already talk among Mr Blair’s enemies that now there will be no referendum, he should go at the end of the British presidency in December. The more charitable mention autumn next year. Mr Blair may hope that he can remain for longer. His original words about serving a full third term were widely taken to mean autumn 2008. That is still looking rather ambitious.
But there is little that even Mr Blair’s most implacable foes can do. The usual suspects can proclaim loudly that it is time for a change. But a direct challenge to Mr Blair, in effect a coup, would be self-defeating and could cause irreparable damage to a subsequent Brown premiership, as the Chancellor well knows. Hence, Mr Brown’s repeated emphasis on Mr Blair’s words about “a stable and orderly transition”. This is meant as a constant reminder to Mr Blair of his past promises.
The main question for Mr Blair now is what he can do. The Labour manifesto was full of pledges, one for almost every day of the year (some repeated, as befits new Labour), and a fortnight ago we had the fullest Queen’s Speech in living memory. But most of the Bills coming before the summer recess are revivals of measures lost at the election, notably on identity cards. Some Blairites regret that this is the first big battle, since the rising costs and debatable benefits make ID cards a far from ideal test for the third-term agenda.
Many key issues on public service reform are still unresolved. White Papers are planned in the autumn on schools, incapacity benefit and health, with legislation to follow later in the long 18-month session. That will determine how far the Blairite reform agenda is continuing, or losing momentum.
Among the matters to be decided are the scope for private and voluntary providers to open new schools within the state system and the power of local councils to block new academies; the role of primary care trusts in a world of greater competition of health provision; the extent of road pricing; and the degree of compulsion in the reform of invalidity benefits. This is apart from longer-term questions such as pensions (after this autumn’s final report from Adair Turner’s commission); the future of civil nuclear energy; any replacement for the Trident nuclear defence system; local government finance and council tax; and public spending after 2008.
The battleground has shifted in a largely unappreciated way because of the shake-up in Cabinet committees. In the past, decisions were taken informally in Mr Blair’s study or in the all-encompassing domestic affairs committee. But there will now be specific committees dealing with asylum and migration, energy and the environment, housing and planning, NHS reform, public services reform, schools policy, serious and orgranised crime and drugs, and welfare reform. These will deal not only with new policies but also with implementation, to create a more orderly process. The committees will be the forum for the regular stocktaking on progress towards targets that Mr Blair has previously undertaken in the Cabinet room with departments and his own policy advisers.
All these committees will be chaired by Mr Blair himself. This puts the onus on him to be available to chair the meetings, so as to drive forward his reform ideas. Unless he does so, there will be pressure to compromise and blunt the reforms. Mr Blair has a largely new, and untested, policy team in No 10. This will shift the focus from him to senior ministers collectively.
The key will be his relationship with Mr Brown, who, with John Prescott, will be the deputy chairman of these committees. During the election, Mr Blair repeatedly told his team, with a mixture of pleasure and suprise, about how Gordon was now on board for his choice and diversity programme, in contrast to his doubts about these reforms in the last Parliament. Others are more sceptical about whether this harmony will continue.
Much will depend on how much time Mr Blair has to devote to these domestic issues. Over the next six weeks, he will be absorbed with foreign affairs. In the next 11 days, he will be visiting Washington, Moscow, Paris, Berlin and Luxembourg before the G8 summit. For all Britain’s good record and intentions on climate change and helping Africa, it is hard to see what specific advances can be agreed at Gleneagles in a month’s time in face of the combination of strong US opposition and Bob Geldof’s boorish raising of expectations. Calling on children to take a day off school to protest is irresponsible even by his self-indulgent standards.
Mr Blair faces a delicate balancing act on Europe. Despite yesterday’s talk from Brussels of extending the ratification deadline, there is no possiblity of the legislation being pushed through Parliament. So, while trying to avoid blame for the loss of the current treaty, Mr Blair has to use the British presidency to find practical ways of making an EU of 25 work (by ending the six-monthly presidency); to keep the debate about enlargement open; and, above all, to push forward the liberalising economic agenda, while emphasising, as Peter Mandelson has argued, the benefits for all Europeans.
These debates will determine Mr Blair’s legacy. The what is more important then the when. In the week when his hopes of ending Britain’s awkward relations with the EU have collapsed, he has to show what the point is of the Blair premiership.
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