Is it over for Blair? Will it be the same for Bush?

Is it over for Blair?

As Labour MPs talk openly about life after Blair, Kamal Ahmed and Gaby Hinsliff look at the doubts hanging over his future as Prime Minister, and five distinguished commentators assess his position

Sunday May 2, 2004
The Observer

The latest parlour game for Labour backbenchers is to check a website predicting what would happen if a general election were held tomorrow.The site is called Financial Calculus and every few weeks it takes an amalgamation of the most recent polls and judges which parties will emerge triumphant at the election. For Tony Blair, its predictions are becoming increasingly gloomy.

Perusing the site last week, Labour MPs were told they were facing meltdown. A majority of 165 would be cut to just 24. More than 70 MPs would lose their seats and their livelihoods. Labour would be left with a small majority, facing a Parliament of knife-edge votes and regular defeats. The ghost of John Major would regularly hove into view.

Such bleak predictions are concentrating minds in the bars and restaurants of Westminster. Last week the talk was as open as it was disloyal. When will Blair go? Can he hang on until a general election? If he does, how much longer can he continue after an election victory? A year? Eighteen months? A whole third term?

Eleven days ago there was the referendum U-turn. Then the Government announced plans for identity cards, not universally welcomed on Labour's backbenches. Last Tuesday, Blair made a speech on immigration when he said that the Government would again 'get tough', a message that was construed as another U-turn. Then there is Iraq. Lack of progress on the Middle East. Problems are piling up at the Prime Minister's door.

Three of Blair's closest allies, Stephen Byers, Peter Mandelson and Alan Milburn, felt so concerned at the fall-out from the European issue that they wrote a joint article in the Guardian trying to shore up the Prime Minister. Blair appeared out of sorts, distracted, without his fabled 'grip' on events. The chattering about his future got louder.

Last week The Observer spoke to senior Labour backbenchers from across the party. Most were chairmen or chairwomen of select committees, chosen because of their seniority within the party and divergent political views. Many admitted that Blair's future has been one of the main topics of conversation over the past fortnight. What was surprising was how many spoke of a 'post-Blair era'. One even admitted that the whole debate had changed in the past two weeks and, although he had not before, he had now given serious thought to LAB, Life After Blair.

Some of those questioned gave wholehearted backing to the Prime Minister, saying that he should continue for a full third term; the majority said he should fight the general election, and probably the referendum campaign on the European Constitution, before quitting; a handful said he should go before the general election. It is a marker of the mood among backbenchers - twitchy, uncertain, concerned about the leadership.

In an effort to calm nerves, the Prime Minister will make a speech on education at the National Association of Head Teachers annual conference today. A speech by Blair on a Sunday is unusual; that it is a bank holiday weekend is even more surprising. Clearly, the Prime Minister is fearful that he is not on the front foot. The last time he spoke to the union was five years ago.

His Cabinet allies are doing their best. In an interview for today's GMTV programme, Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, says Blair's leadership is 'indispensable'. On the same programme Byers demands a 'Blairite' manifesto to convince voters that the Prime Minister will indeed serve a full term. It all adds to the febrile atmosphere, with much talk in corridors of plots and fixes, alliances being formed and disbanded as Cabinet heavyweights jockey for position. Stories appearing yesterday even suggested that 'friends' of Gordon Brown were preparing for a snap leadership election. They were dismissed as 'absolute rubbish'.

Aides also suspect the Tories are now benefiting from leaks from disgruntled civil servants - and from the increasing impatience of some Cabinet Ministers, who sense the Prime Minister faltering.

Jack Straw's growing friendship with Brown may have been pushed to the fore by the wrangle over a European constitution referendum, but Labour MPs have been tracking it with interest for months, particularly during the row over university tuition fees. Straw, like Brown initially, made little secret of his unhappiness at the fees policy: some backbench rebels sent to be 'talked round' by the Foreign Secretary before the crunch vote emerged convinced that Straw was privately sympathetic.

'The amazing thing is that people are now asking: "Who will you back in a leadership campaign?"' said one member of the Government, reclining on the leather benches of the Strangers bar in the Commons last week. 'People are already talking of the post-Blair era.'

Newspaper columns have been full of bleak predictions that the Prime Minister is losing the political plot. The Government is out of control. The country is in a distressed state. Number 10 and close allies of the Prime Minister dismiss such talk as political froth. Blair, admittedly in a hole, is not about to commit political suicide just as the private briefings he is getting inside Number 10 are starting to tell him that the public services are finally beginning to improve, they say. Why hand that on to your successor, highly likely to be the Chancellor, to take all the credit?

As Blair told The Observer in an interview last year, if he stands at the next election - which, barring calamity, people within Downing Street predict he will - he will serve for a full third term.

'That has not changed, his appetite for the job is as obvious as it has ever been,' said one Number 10 adviser.

Last week the point was reiterated. A senior member of the Cabinet had lunch with the political editors of Channel 4 News and the Times. He confirmed what Blair had said. The headlines the next day said that Blair would go 'on and on', a deliberate echo of Margaret Thatcher's promise during the 1987 election campaign. Three years later she resigned.

Number 10 officials insist these are simply short-term choppy waters. On the referendum and immigration, the Government is now in the same place as the public, whatever the opprobrium heaped on them for the policy U-turns and accusations that they are pandering to the right-wing media.

This week sees the twenty-fifth anniversary of Thatcher's first election victory. On the same day Labour will launch its campaign for the local elections on 10 June. 'We'll be talking about public services, Michael Howard will be at a dinner celebrating Thatcher,' said one Number 10 official. 'That's not a bad place to be.'

Younger Labour MPs are also beginning to mutter about a lack of loyalty. The 1997 intake, many of them surprised that they even managed to get into Parliament, owe Blair their careers.

'We are a loyal group: this is the man who won us two huge majorities,' said one MP who first won his seat in 1997. 'Things have been going so well for so long, we thought the norm was being 10 points ahead in the polls. But do we now suddenly gamble everything even though we are still ahead?'

Few see any way that Blair would resign now. He is a man with his eye on his legacy. When things are at their worse is when he is least likely to quit. Win a referendum and he might feel vindicated and strong enough to announce that he is off. But those close to him point out there is then the issue of getting Britain into the single currency.

For the Conservatives there is division over what to hope for: many Tory MPs calculate that a tired Blair, who could be portrayed as struggling on past his sell-by date, would be easier to tackle than a reinvigorated Brown promising a 'new broom' approach to past failings.

'There is no doubt Brown would be able to unite Labour much more, but he's less of a polished performer,' said one senior Tory source. 'There's something dour and cold about the way he does things, he's less able to engage middle Britain. But it's a bit like it was with Thatcher: you get to a stage where people want change. If the party in power says "OK, we'll change the guy at the top", there's an element of people saying: "Well they have changed, that will do".'

If Blair were to go early, Tories also fear they would lose a potent weapon - exploiting his associations with excessive spin and untrustworthiness, linked to the row over WMD in Iraq.

Intriguingly, the Liberal Democrats, whose leader, Charles Kennedy, is much closer to Blair, have made no plans for a succession, believing he will be facing them over the dispatch box for some years to come. 'He's not going anywhere, at this stage anyway,' said one source.

One senior Labour backbencher, himself no paid-up Blairite, admitted the Prime Minister was still the best man for the job. 'I'm reminded of Hilaire Belloc,' he said. 'Always keep a-hold of nurse, for fear of finding something worse.'

Lord Hurd of Westwell
Former Foreign Secretary

The Prime Minister is in a bit of a nosedive. He's a man of skill and energy, and might pull out of it, but he's lost control in the past few months, in a way which I wouldn't have expected.

It's not necessarily fatal - control can be reasserted. But the way he's done things has been very, very odd. For the moment his hands are not on the steering wheel. With the referendum question, the failure to consult the Cabinet was really very strange. It's not how he would have handled it at the beginning.

Iraq is his main problem. He's not in control of that - he doesn't know how it's going to work out, and it's going to be very bad for his reputation if it goes wrong. You get tired without knowing it, you begin to run out of steam, even for someone reasonably young like Blair. I think for his own good he ought to step down. There comes a time when people, in the end, say enough's enough.

Sunder Katwala
General Secretary, the Fabian Society

Tony Blair is determined to continue for a full third term. If he were to quit tomorrow, the historians' verdict on Labour's longest-serving premier could be one of promise unfulfilled.

For seven years, the ratings have defied the normal rules of political gravity. Commentators now discount the fact that any opposition five points behind in mid-term is in deep trouble, hoping that a Michael Howard revival might make the next election a contest. New Labour was never a brand which could remain shiny new forever.

There are major internal debates about Labour's direction, but these are conducted with a maturity unthinkable a generation ago. Many Labour members feel ownership over the MPs and Prime Minister they elected, and they know Labour needs a broad coalition of support to win.

Blair's biggest test will be the vote on Europe in which he would be playing for the highest stakes.

Claire Tomalin
Writer

I am acutely aware that politicians have to work with the material they've got, and criticising them when one doesn't have their responsibilities is a really easy thing to do. But Blair's position has been very, very damaged by the situation in Iraq and being yoked to George Bush. Bush is a dreadful, dreadful figure, and a dreadful politician.

I n many ways Blair has been extremely successful. But Mary Tudor had Calais written on her heart and Blair will have Iraq written on his. He is irreparably damaged by his policy. He has somehow got locked in to this relationship with Bush.

Another Prime Minister might have been able to distance himself, to take another line. But it is extremely easy to say that. What Blair has been doing is treading a very, very, very difficult path, and it's gone wrong. I do think he has a very excellent Chancellor. From my point of view, I think I would prefer Gordon Brown as leader.

Bob Worcester
Chairman, Mori

Tony Blair's got a lot of troubles at the moment. He's being besieged from all sides, he's having people bail out from Number Ten, he's upset the Left and he's upset the Right of the party - and yet his poll ratings are holding up very nicely.

The public are more set in their ways than the chattering classes who believe that the replacement of Iain Duncan Smith has made a big difference. It hasn't. Michael Howard has made a lot of noise at the dispatch box, but not a lot of noise in the country.

Yes, the decline in trust has been substantial. Blair bet the store on weapons of mass destruction. He told us that in 45 minutes we could all be dead - and now that turns out not to have been true.

My advice would be do what you have to do, keep your head down. All this business with the referendum was badly judged. The less he says, the more he gets on with the job, the quicker he's going to get out of this morass.

Julia Langdon
Political journalist and broadcaster

The beginning of the end was David Kelly's death last summer. Tony Blair was fatally damaged. That doesn't mean he cannot win the next election - I think he can, on the mathematics. The Tories are not popular enough to win, even though I believe he has lost the trust of the people.

The word that will pop up all the time is credibility - that is what he has lost because he has shown himself to be a man who responds to situations rather than acting on principle. What the electorate likes, and always, always sniffs out in politicians, is people who tell the truth. Blair has been shown to be rather a wibbly-wobbly person. So he should be true to the Labour Party rather than be true to himself. But his problem is that he doesn't have an instinctive sense of what a Labour politician should do.

The restoration of collective Cabinet government would do an enormous amount to stabilise the political situation.
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Interviews by Robert Colvile