It is easy to mock. When confronted with some of Blair's prose it will be difficult to resist. Let me begin, however, by saying that I do not think that New Labour was a total failure. Anyone who worked in public services during the early 1990s, and then experienced the changes under the Labour government, can not have failed to see the improvements. As the storm clouds of the coalition's assault on the public sector gather, many of the successes are thrown into stark relief and beyond statistical quibbling. Crime, health and education saw vast improvements on most indicators, power was devolved to London, Wales and Scotland and the Bank of England gained independence, yet as Polly Toynbee and David Walker have noted in their recent book, 'The Verdict' New Labour failed to reap the political reward. Why?
It seems to me that a government, intent on controlling the message, failed to inspire the British consciousness with any sense of an overarching philosophy or mission. What did New Labour actually believe in? Blair calls himself, 'not so much a politician of traditional left or right, but a moderniser.' Three election victories suggest that such pragmatism can keep you in power but can it create lasting bonds? In my mind, the mechanics of controlling the message were too apparent and made you question the message itself; this was true before Iraq and how many were really listening anymore after WMDs? It says something about the Blair government that its great pantomime villain was not a cabinet minister or even an MP, but Alastair Campbell, the press secretary. Even after he resigned in 2003, when it became obvious that he was now the bigger story, Campbell remained in the wings of the public imagination casting a shadow of doubt on all government declarations.
The message from the introduction of 'A Journey' is that it won't be a traditional political memoir ('rather easy to put down'). Blair, the moderniser, is interested in leadership and claims he is not interested in putting his term as prime minister into historical context. Thus, he puts his term into historical context. This is the modern politician, pragmatic and not hamstrung by ideology or what has gone before. The notes inside the dust jacket claim that Blair is the dominant political figure of the last two decades. World figure? Clearly not. British figure? One can forgive some publisher's hyperbole, but you don't need to be a political insider to see that Blair's political authority barely extended next door to number 11. Surely, the astonishing achievement of three election victories, for a previously unelectable party, should be enough to sell his book?
The skeleton in the cupboard is Mrs Thatcher. Three election victories which transformed British politics in a way that Blair utterly failed to achieve or even attempt. It is Thatcher who remained the dominant force in British politics long after she lost the Tory leadership; wrecking the Conservative Party and shaping New Labour. Toynbee and Walker suggest that, by 1997, Blair believed, 'Thatcherism had entered the English soul' and New Labour 'capitulated to the market'. A Thatcherite, no, but, in many ways he is the slick bastard child of Thatcher.
In her memoirs, 'Downing Street Years', Thatcher strives to tie her policies and actions to the central tenets of traditional Conservatism stretching back to Edmund Burke. In her hands, history is G K Chesterton's 'democracy of the dead', providing the ideological ammunition to support her own mythology. Ironically, I would argue that what her memoirs demonstrate is that she utterly failed to see the weakness of traditional Conservative social values to control the market forces she unleashed. Tony Blair and New Labour are the political expression of this unforeseen consequence, salesmen rather than inventors. New Labour are the consultants, the advertisers, the branding, the presentation and the soundbites that replaced any sense of cultural restraint. Like Betjeman's 'Executive'*, ("I do some mild developing. The sort of place I need, is a quiet country market town that's rather run to seed."), Blair believes that short-term success is enough justification to ride roughshod over traditions and a historical legacy. Despite Blair protesting that, "my soul is and always will be that of a rebel." I would argue that 'A Journey' is very much of its time - not a book about leadership, but a book about management.
*If you are not familiar with Betjeman's prescient poem 'Executive' - http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/john_betjeman/poems/823
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