Barren Blair

By Steve Hynd

Douglas Saunders wonders what happened to Tony Blair.

A decade ago, Mr. Blair was the most important and influential political leader in the world, and the system of government and centre-left ideology he spawned, Blairism, was the template the world wanted to follow.

Yet after leaving office in 2007, Mr. Blair has fallen off the map and plunged himself into irrelevance. His key role, as the Middle East envoy for the group of major powers known as the Quartet, has achieved little; this week�s move toward renewed peace talks has had nothing to do with him. His other initiative, the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, has been singularly ineffective. He has become extremely wealthy in the private sector, but his visibility and influence in world affairs has withered.

...[His] world view has become increasingly acute. He believes, against the conclusions of the world�s best economists, that fiscal stimulus should have ended in 2009 and that more tax cuts were the solution to the debt crisis. He believes that Iran today should be seen the way Iraq was in 2003. He is happy, in these pages, to refer to �the Bush/Blair position,� turning his greatest error into his defining belief.

His eponymous philosophy lives on in moderate governments � you can argue that Britain�s current Liberal-Conservative coalition is practising a version. But he has shorn himself of Blairism, leaving a barren philosophy that suits only Tony, alone.

I can speak about Blair only by inference, since I never knew him, but I can speak from personal aquaintance about many of his closest followers, people he personally recruited and pushed to power.

Every single one was a venal, self-interested operator who had decided in their teens that they would have a career in politics. Some changed parties and ideologies more than once until they found their home in the Blairite wing of the New Labour party where the only key ideology was to have a sucessful career in politics. Other than that, the policy paradigms were set by "what get's us most votes or loses us least". In that sense, at least, Blairism was entirely populist. But it never amounted to a "system of government and centre-left ideology". It was always just about gaining power and keeping it, whatever had to be said or done to accomplish that. All, if they hadn't been following after the Thatcher Years and the blowback to that time, would just as cheerfully have been Cameron-esque Tories. The two have their clear ethic - say you believe in anything if it gets/keeps you elected - in common. In that sense, Cameron is Blair's true heir, not anyone from the Labour Party.

Blair's problem, his downfall, is that after saying anything to keep power for too many years he came to believe the power was his by right. That's when it turned ugly, with a security state and his neocon modern ideas, now expressed in his memoir.

I always find it useful to remember Sir Humphrey Appleby's advice on political memoirs.

"Any statement in a politician's memoirs can represent one of six different levels of reality:
a. What happened.
b. What he believed happened.
c. What he would have liked to have happened.
d. What he wants to believe happened.
e. What he wants other people to believe happened.
f. What he wants other people to believe he believed happened."

Blairism was always barren. It's only and entire purpose was to convince the voters that it wasn't. Now that he doesn't have to convince the voters any longer, the true Blair can shine through - but whether the current true Blair was always the same Blair is an open question. Back then, I don't think he was ever that committed to anything except getting elected at any cost.