The beginning of the end? (For Tony Blair)

'I know what is going on. I am going on," said Harold Wilson, back when Tony Blair was playing air guitar at Fettes. Yesterday Mr Blair held yet another press conference to give us that same message. Oh, he's going to go all right. But not until he has transformed this country - health, education, climate change, housing, parliament itself.

Yesterday he outlined a programme that would have kept the Victorians flat out for a century, while insisting that he would leave his successor plenty of time "to bed himself in".

It was wonderful: demented, mad, crazed. Did he hear what he was saying? [..]

Why Blair is so keen to exceed his shelf life

Joan McAlpine
The Herald
8 May 2006

Tony Blair is fond of telling us to learn from the world of business. What a pity he refuses to emulate Sir Ken Morrison, the supermarket supremo [..]. In every respect barring their departure, the predicament of the two men is strangely similar. Sir Ken is credited with building his father's Bradford street stall into a retail force many believed would soon reckon with Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury. Mr Blair is credited with making Labour electable.

Now Morrisons struggles and 74-year-old Sir Ken, once its greatest asset, is considered the company's biggest problem (no need to spell out the political parallels there.) Sir Ken's "crime" was excessive ambition. His takeover of Safeway was a disaster. Some might accuse Blair of similar overconfidence in taking Britain into the unpopular Iraq war. But while Sir Ken's "mistake" wiped £2bn off Morrison's share price, the charred bodies of British servicemen in Basra yesterday remind us that Mr Blair's error carries a much heavier penalty.

The prime minister hangs on to power. The veteran businessman does the decent thing. A newspaper report yesterday said Sir Ken would step down as executive chairman of the Wm Morrison chain and announce a timetable for his departure at the company's annual shareholders meeting this month. He presumably hopes a personal sacrifice will save the business which bears his family name, and so preserve his honour and everyone's future.

Meanwhile, at least 50 Labour MPs demand a similar departure timetable from Tony Blair. One individual said he should announce it at the party conference. If he followed this advice and Gordon Brown took over, Labour's poll standing might go the same way as Morrisons' share price - it has soared since rumours of Sir Ken's departure began.

Yet Blair appears ever more determined to remain at the helm of New Labour PLC until it implodes. The dissenters were snubbed, rubbished and traduced yesterday by his associates during various media appearances. He has already knifed colleagues in a boardroom cull more vicious than anything recently witnessed in the City. Determined to remain executive chairman, he has surrounded himself with a team described by some commentators as the "uber-loyalists". There is little honour here and even less dignity. This is power at any price.

The PM appears to care little if his "me-first" approach costs Labour the next election. (As he will not contest it, what's to lose?) Here, the similarities with corporate behaviour must end. How many shareholders placidly watch their company destroyed to feed the egos of senior managers? Conspiracy theorists, particularly those on the left of the Labour Party, will say they saw it coming. They have long questioned Blair's commitment to the party and its traditions. [..] A few - albeit on the lunatic fringes - even hint he is some kind of establishment "plant". Events of recent weeks only give succour to such paranoia. So many of the recent scandals suggest a party leadership which speaks a different language and inhabits a different moral universe from its core vote.

Let's go back to Tessa Jowell's peculiar household finances. Yes, we know it was all the fault of her now-estranged husband. But talk of hedge funds, overlapping investments and accounting sophistry aimed at getting around the tax man must have confused traditional supporters in areas such as Glasgow, Newcastle and Leeds. Disputes over hedges mean only one thing to those folks: super-sized conifers. The impression given by the Jowell affair was one of already rich people driven by greed. Similar poor judgment was shown in the lack of concern by spin doctors when news of Cherie Blair's £7000 hairdressing bill emerged. The celebrity-obsessed public might enjoy reading of such indulgence among footballers' wives and glamour models. But Mrs Blair is no Jordan. We expect different standards of behaviour from our first lady.

And what are Britain's hard-working low-earners to make of the fate of John Prescott? Such sexual misbehaviour at work would result in instant dismissal for a couple "caught at it" on the call-centre floor. But the DPM (to use his mistress's sobriquet) is rewarded for his conduct - at least, that is how less work for the same pay is generally perceived by most people. How else can we describe Prescott being relieved of all his departmental duties but keeping the £137,000 salary and two luxury homes?

The most junior of public relations assistants could have told Blair that this was a disastrous decision. But perhaps he did not care. To lose the deputy prime minister would result in an election that would make Blair's position very vulnerable. The scandals listed here are more trivial than "cash for honours" and released-murderers fiascos. But they will have strong resonance with ordinary people on average wages who wonder what has become of the government which promised to end sleaze. Tony Blair will recognise this, so why doesn't he stand down "for the sake of the party"?

The only conclusion is that Blair cares little for the future of his party. If he did he would allow Brown to renew it - before the end of this year. He would not limp on, like a football manager who can no longer motivate his players because they question the gaffer's own commitment.

Blair stays because he is obsessed with securing his own place in history. He once thought the democratisation of the Middle East would bear his hallmark. Nobody believes that now. Demoting Jack Straw, the foreign secretary who ruled out military action against Iran, suggests the PM may end his tenure with even more blood on his hands. Nor is he likely to go down as the man who plugged that hole in the ozone layer or saved Africa's children. The chancellor has more claim to the "tackling poverty" mantle both home and abroad.

So what does that leave Blair to offer posterity? His advisers talk of his determination to "drive through public service reform". But what does that mean? Compared with Labour's creation of the NHS, or Margaret Thatcher's privatisation programme, "public sector reform" is all a bit messy and vague - especially with hospitals going bust all over England.

But there is one achievement of the iron lady which Blair can surpass [..]. Mrs Thatcher was the longest-serving PM of the last century, surviving from 1979 until 1990. Tony Blair must hang on until 2008 to beat her record and become the longest-serving PM since Lord Liverpool. Perhaps longevity is the only achievement that remains. By 2008 David Cameron may have built up a formidable opposition - though if Labour support the nuking of Iran, it will not be hard to beat. Could Blair really be so determined to emulate Thatcher that he would happily cast his party back into the darkness? The conspiracy theorists might agree. I don't know. I just wish our prime minister had the integrity of a supermarket boss. Now that's saying something.

Well Simon Hoggart makes me proud to be English...

'This feels like the beginning of the end'

The local election results were not bad enough to force his immediate ejection, as some had feared (and perhaps others had hoped). But the last 24 hours have brought two signs that the light over No 10 is fading. First came a reshuffle that exposed more problems for the government than it solved. And now the Guardian's revelation of a plot by serious minded and previously loyal MPs - emphatically not the usual suspects - to force Blair into naming the day of his departure. Perhaps the true loyalists around the prime minister still believe he can serve out a third full term, holding onto office till 2009 or even 2010. But if they do, they are the only ones. To most of his party, this feels like the beginning of the end. [..]

He doubtless began the day hoping his reshuffle, the biggest of his career, would soothe the wounds of the night before. But it didn't. Charles Clarke refused to accept a consolation prize, preferring a return to the backbenches and, extraordinarily, publicly disputing the PM's judgement. That must have forced some hurried changes to the game plan.

The result was grumbles all round. Several MPs wonder how sustainable it is for John Prescott to keep his title and salary as deputy prime minister without a department to run: "What will he actually do?" asked Kate Hoey.

Why has Patricia Hewitt kept her job as health secretary? Why has the accident prone chief whip Hilary Armstrong retained a place in the cabinet? What sense does it make to have David Miliband toil away for a year rethinking local government and the cities, only to move him before his work is done to focus on the countryside?

Far from bringing in fresh blood, Blair was forced to recirculate blood that's been in the system a long, long time. No one embodies that better than John Reid, arch-Blairite henchman now elevated to the Home Office - his sixth cabinet post in five years. Reid gives good Newsnight, but rejuvenating he ain't [..].

But the objections to this reshuffle went deeper than that. For nothing about it suggested a prime minister preparing the ground for the "orderly transition" which he himself necessitated nearly two years ago, when he announced that he would not seek a fourth term. More importantly nothing in this reshuffle signalled an eventual handover to Brown at all.

On the contrary, the PM simply dug in, surrounding himself with Blairite ultras. The promotion of Reid, the retention of Tessa Jowell are part of it; but even more provocative was the appointment of Hazel Blears as party chairman. If Blair had a transition in mind, he would have picked a neutral for the job; or even someone allied to Brown, say Douglas Alexander, to smooth the way. He would also have brought on a new generation, giving them precious experience, ready to serve a new administration. Instead the PM selected a team to help him finish the job, rather than to prepare for the next phase of the Labour government.

What he installed yesterday was a Final Days administration.

The great irony is that the conventional sequence of such a day is for a disastrous poll result to be rescued by a sparkling reshuffle. Yet yesterday it was almost the other way around: it was the ministerial rejig, rather than the council elections, which drew attention to the fundamental weaknesses of the government. For on its own, Thursday night was not the disaster it might have been. Labour could have haemorrhaged 400 seats, rather than 250; its share of the vote could have fallen to less than a quarter, rather than 26%.

In the event, Labour could claim to have held firm, not falling below its 2004 local performance, which was followed by a general election win. There were even some gains, Lambeth in London and extra seats in Manchester, Sheffield and Barnsley.

But that was not the mood yesterday. For there was a winner on Thursday and his name is David Cameron. He took his party to the psychologically important 40% threshold for the first time since 1992. It's not yet the national surge the Conservatives need: Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle remain stubbornly Tory-free zones. But gains in London and the south east, in Hammersmith and Croydon, are not to be sneezed at either. As one anxious Labour strategist put it yesterday: "Seats like those, remember, are the New Labour majority."

The Labour party is beginning to see the possibility of defeat, on the distant horizon maybe, but, for the first time in a decade, visible. They are desperate to renew themselves before the voters decide they are clapped out and should be turfed out. They want Tony Blair to get that message - and, if he doesn't listen, some of them are ready to make him.

Whatever happened to ... Blair's congressional gold medal?

Iain Hollingshead
Saturday May 20, 2006
The Guardian

[..] It is three years this month since the US Congress awarded [Tony Blair] its highest civilian honour: the congressional gold medal. To date, it still hasn't been collected.

In May 2003, Congress praised America's "staunch and steadfast ally" for his "outstanding and enduring contributions to maintaining the security of all freedom-loving nations". The bill's sponsor in the House of Representatives was even more emotive: "This medal attempts to capture for historical keeping what most Americans already feel in their hearts: Tony Blair is a hero." [..]

[Blair is] the second British prime minister (after Winston Churchill) to be honoured in this way and the 18th non-American, alongside Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela. Other recipients have included Walt Disney, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, Jesse Owens and Colin Powell.

When, on July 17 2003, Blair became the fourth British prime minister to address the US Congress, it was widely thought that he would collect the medal at the same time. In retrospect, it was probably fortunate that he didn't. The weapons expert David Kelly was found dead within hours of the speech.

Rumours began - which have never since disappeared - that the real reason for the delay is the ongoing homegrown concern over the Iraq war and the special relationship with America. There was plenty of substance behind the prime minister's self-deprecating joke to Congress that its warm welcome was "more than I deserve, and more than I'm used to". Picking up a medal in Washington while British soldiers continue to die in Iraq is unlikely to go down well.

The question now is: how much longer will Blair drag his feet? The old line that it takes a long time to mint the medal looks increasingly disingenuous. Nelson Mandela got his in 56 days; John Paul II's took 165. Last December, Blair brushed aside a parliamentary question on the topic, saying he had "one or two other things to do at the moment". A Downing Street spokesman now confirms there are no current plans to pick it up. Conservative commentators have complained that this is a "snub" to the American people.

Interestingly, this is not the first US award that Blair has failed to acknowledge. In 2003, he was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honour. Previous winners include Ronald Reagan, Rudy Giuliani and Muhammad Ali, yet the PM has still been unable to collect the award. "I don't think it's going to happen now," says a spokesperson for the award's sponsor.

Meanwhile, Westminster gossip suggests that Blair intends to collect the congressional gold medal after he has relinquished the keys to number 10. [..]

Watchdog blasts PM over sleaze

The Sunday Times
May 21, 2006

BRITAIN'S sleaze watchdog has attacked Tony Blair for failing to uphold standards in public life after a succession of scandals.

Sir Alistair Graham, appointed by the PM to oversee politicians' behaviour, says that Blair "sees standards as a peripheral, minor issue not worthy of serious consideration".

By contrast, Gordon Brown, who met Graham last month, was much more supportive.

It emerged this weekend that further arrests may be "imminent" in the investigation into the alleged loans-for-honours scandal.

Graham reveals his frustration at Blair's reluctance to adopt his recommendations on improving politicians' behaviour. On cronyism, he says: "We have given recommendations as to how the government could address that. They accepted many of our recommendations but they didn't accept those."

"We suspect he is pretty lukewarm to the work we do, though it is interesting where we suggested changes to improve ethical standards in local government, [the government] accepted all of those."

Graham believes an independent figure should be appointed to study alleged breaches of the ministerial code, which is currently policed by the prime minister.

Cherie Blair says she never admits mistakes

Saturday May 27
Reuters

[..] During the nine years her husband has been in power, Cherie Blair has been skewered in the press for everything from her political comments to her choice of friends.

In an interview with the BBC she said it would be "arrogant and foolish" to say she did everything right.

When pressed about mistakes she said: "I don't own up to them publicly. I'm never really in a situation where it gets to that."

The latest unwelcome spotlight shone on her this week when she was criticised for signing a copy of the official report into a government scientist's suicide which was then offered for auction at a fundraiser for the Labour Party. [..]

Cherie Blair forcefully dismissed criticism when asked about her 7,000 pound hairdressing bill during the last election, saying "Honestly what a load of fuss about trivia".

A prominent human rights barrister who herself bid to become a parliamentary candidate, she was once picked in a poll as the person Britons most wanted to deport. [..]

YouGov pollster Peter Kellner [..] said the contrast with former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's husband Denis could not be more stark.

"You will recall that when invited once to speak at a White House dinner, he famously got up and said 'Like Mark Anthony entering Cleopatra's tent, I have not come here to talk.'"

What can he do next?

One of these days Tony Blair will step down as prime minister. But then what? Will he write his autobiography? Try for the top job at the UN? Or just make loads of money on the celebrity lecture circuit? Michael White weighs up the options

Monday June 26, 2006
The Guardian


We all know that Tony Blair will leave Downing Street shortly, probably "sooner rather than later", as Jack Straw helpfully puts it. No one knows exactly when, not even Blair. But that's the easy bit. Much harder is what a healthy retired statesman, just 54 years old next May, does with the rest of his life.
Winning and leaving office young and fit is a modern problem; in the old days, exhausted political volcanoes generally went quiet and died. When they refused to go quiet - Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher spring to mind - they were able to do great damage to the parties they had once loved. Blair will not do that, but what will he do?



What can he do next?

One of these days Tony Blair will step down as prime minister. But then what? Will he write his autobiography? Try for the top job at the UN? Or just make loads of money on the celebrity lecture circuit? Michael White weighs up the options

Monday June 26, 2006
The Guardian


We all know that Tony Blair will leave Downing Street shortly, probably "sooner rather than later", as Jack Straw helpfully puts it. No one knows exactly when, not even Blair. But that's the easy bit. Much harder is what a healthy retired statesman, just 54 years old next May, does with the rest of his life.
Winning and leaving office young and fit is a modern problem; in the old days, exhausted political volcanoes generally went quiet and died. When they refused to go quiet - Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher spring to mind - they were able to do great damage to the parties they had once loved. Blair will not do that, but what will he do?


Even before he became Labour leader Blair used to say in private: "I don't need this. There's more to life than politics - I can walk away." He says it still, despite his determination to hang on to office. But walk to what?

And [Labour MPs] claimed to be livid about Mr Cameron's wish to stop Scottish MPs from voting on purely English laws. Tony Blair huffed that it would create two classes of MPs and so would be alien to the constitution, a view which would carry more weight if the constitution actually existed.

Hardly pausing for breath while MPs wilt

Simon Hoggart
Wednesday July 5, 2006
The Guardian

Tony Blair is amazing. Yesterday morning he spoke to MPs for two and a half hours while scarcely drawing breath and taking, so far as I could see, just three sips of tea from a cardboard cup. The air conditioning struggled with the 33 degrees outside.

By the end, the two dozen MPs (members of the liaison committee, all chairmen of other committees) were wilting like hydrangeas that hadn't seen rain in a month. They were slumped, glassy-eyed and somnolent. [..]

Yet the prime minister was brimming with beans, bursting with energy and verve. Alan Williams, chairman of the chairmen, managed to ask if he thought his "successor" would also hold these sessions. "I think they should be weekly!" he exclaimed. In that time he had spoken fluently, at length, about the problems of the Home Office, alienation in the Muslim community, nuclear power v renewable energy, immigration in Malta, Sinn Féin's position on decommissioning, the narco-economy of Afghanistan, the US supreme court and the religious demographics of Iraq.

He did it without a note. Behind him sat three aides, who spoke not a word to him throughout. You may think what you like about Mr Blair, and many people do, but I cannot imagine that any other government leader in the world could have turned in such a performance. Now and again he even did passion, anger, sadness, and jokes. You just knew that if Mr Williams had said: "This has been fascinating. Would you care to go on for another two hours?" he would have said: "Yes".

The session started with the usual backchat between him and Gwyneth Dunwoody, who said winsomely that she was not allowed to talk to him because she'd been told she upset him. "You would stop me, wouldn't you?" she asked, coyly. "That would be a pointless exercise," he muttered. "I don't see how you can be so cruel to one so young and defenceless," she replied. Gwyneth being flirtatious is like the dancing hippos in Fantasia; it's there right in front of you, but you still can't believe it.

In the past the committee has been unduly deferential. Not now. They pick fights. Edward Leigh challenged him over Iraq. The difference between now and a few years ago was that "if you disagreed with Saddam, you ended up in a mass grave", Mr Blair said. "Oh, come on!" said Mr Leigh. "No, you come on!" Mr Blair barked back. It was like watching Rooney versus Ronaldo.

David Maclean, a former Tory chief whip, got into a row with him about the Home Office. Mr Maclean had been a home office minister when, Mr Blair said, the asylum system had been "a shambles". A Labour MP shouted: "Good luck, David!" Perhaps he was going to offer to hold his jacket. "It was not a shambles!" Mr Maclean shouted back. "Jack Straw never said it was a shambles. Your new home secretary says it's a shambles, and you blame it on an administration from nine years ago!"

Mrs Dunwoody unilaterally decided to end the fight and move on. She is rarely gainsaid. "We were enjoying ourselves," said Mr Blair, a boy brought in from playing football because it's bedtime. "Yes, I rather thought you were, and that was one of my reasons," Mrs Dunwoody said. Mr Blair grinned, but he also quailed. It was like one of those gangsters who order a hit, then quiver when their mother speaks crisply to them.

At one point he was asked whether he actually cared what his cabinet thought about anything. "It would be odd if the prime minister didn't have a firm view on what's the right thing to do," he said, which I read to mean "No".

And this man is about to quit? Not yet, I'd guess, and not for some time.

The chief fundraiser for the British Labour Party has been arrested by police probing allegations state awards had been given in return for cash, according to media reports. Labour came under pressure after it said it had received nearly 14 million pounds of loans from 12 businessmen, some of whom were nominated for seats in the House of Lords afterwards.

How weird it must be to wake up every morning and be Gordon Brown. In those half-asleep moments he must check for aches and pains, judge the state of his bladder, and ask himself whether he is prime minister yet. Then a spasm of annoyance as he realises that it was all a dream; the shouts and yells next door are from the breakfasting children of the man who is still prime minister!

At that time, dreams, nightmares and reality merge together. When he came to consciousness yesterday he must have dared to think that the prize for which he has waited so long is about to fall.

Why, we expect Mr Plod to turn up at Number 10 any moment! "Very sorry to trouble you, prime minister, but as you know, in our job we have to be tough on crime as well as the causes of crime."

"I fully understand, deputy assistant commissioner, or may I call you John? A mug of tea, perhaps? Or a peerage? Ha, ha, just a little joke!"

The chancellor is now in the position of a man who has been waiting, praying and hoping for his curmudgeonly old father to die so he can inherit the title and estate. But the police have been called in. There is talk of fraud, of massive bills, of the chief accountant turning up in Rio. The whole kit and caboodle may be worthless! He might be about to inherit what an American politician once called "a pitcher of warm spit".