Politics Blair’s
duplicity may be deliberate, or he may just change his mind a
lot Peter Oborne
Very few political decisions achieve nothing but good: one of
them was the abolition of exchange controls exactly 25 years ago.
This week the Adam Smith Institute rightly marked the anniversary
with a dinner at the St Ermin’s hotel. Geoffrey Howe, the chancellor
who masterminded the stroke, reflected on how monumental the
judgment — so obvious in retrospect — appeared at the time. Lord
Howe revealed that it was the only occasion in his career that he
lost sleep on account of a policy decision, while Margaret Thatcher
was all but overcome by last-minute nerves. Nigel Lawson, financial
secretary in 1979, used the event to muse on how political judgments
are reached. ‘It was a leap in the dark,’ he remembered. ‘We knew
that if we had waited for a consensus, nothing would have happened.
We had to make the decision, and then build a new consensus around
it.’
I reflected on Lord Lawson’s remarks after watching poor Tony
Blair duck question after question at his monthly Downing Street
press conference on Monday. This was a badly attended affair, only
called at the last moment, and a fractious Prime Minister had little
to say. Even his jokes failed to come off. His government now
operates along exactly opposite lines to the classic account
formulated by Lord Lawson at the St Ermin’s hotel. Blair consults
his focus groups, tries to build his consensus, and then makes his
leap in the dark.
In the early days, it was not like this. The Blair government was
indeed capable of bold strokes, of which granting independence
to the Bank of England was the most notable. Admittedly that was
Gordon Brown’s, and emphatically not Tony Blair’s, achievement. But
seven years ago even Tony Blair’s more emollient means of
decision-making often worked. Because everyone so desperately willed
him on to succeed, he could sometimes pull off miracles. But today
this magic has vanished. When the Prime Minister tries to build
coalitions, he creates rifts. When he tries to move forward, he
engenders only resistance.
A wide gap has opened up between what Tony Blair says and what he
means. The gambling Bill, which only two weeks ago seemed set to
meander serenely through Parliament, is a case in point. At Monday’s
press conference Tony Blair was all square behind the sensible and
long-delayed plan to allow more casinos in Britain’s cities, and
open up to the masses the private pleasures of the elite. But
immediately the conference was over, the government briefing machine
set to work, telling friendly lobby correspondents that the Prime
Minister hadn’t really meant a word he said, and that the government
was set upon climb-down.
The Home Secretary’s decision, formalised on Monday, to abandon
Britain’s veto on asylum and immigration to Brussels is another
example. There is doubtless something to be said for this
concession, which brings Britain into line with the rest of the
European Union. If so, ministers did not try to make their case.
Instead they denied that the surrender had been made, sticking as
best they could to the line which Tony Blair propounded to David
Frost last June, that Britain ‘will have complete control over our
asylum policies’.
The Prime Minister took cover behind exactly the same mendacity
during last week’s row over the future of the examination system.
This is what he told the CBI on 18 October: ‘As Mike Tomlinson and
Charles Clarke said, GCSEs and A-levels will stay.’ But Tomlinson
never said any such thing. On the contrary, the Tomlinson report
explicitly states that ‘the existing system of
qualifications...should be replaced by a system of diplomas,
available at entry, foundation, intermediate and advanced levels.’
Government ministers were guilty of exactly the same kind of
duplicity during the row over the Black Watch deployment in Iraq.
The Prime Minister and his Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon went on
denying that any deployment had been ordered long after the soldiers
and their families had been instructed to move.
When Tony Blair finally came clean, he tried to sweeten the pill
by insisting that the Black Watch would be back home by Christmas.
Then it emerged that he was being disingenuous; it emerged two days
later that though the Black Watch would return, another regiment
would be dispatched to replace it.
It is hard to tell whether this duplicity is deliberate or
whether the Prime Minister just changes his mind from day to day.
Perhaps the answer is a bit of both. This same unedifying conundrum
was raised again late on Tuesday night, when peers voted to replace
the hunting ban with a system of regulation. They were gallantly
responding to repeated messages from Tony Blair himself, who has
told Countryside Alliance supporters privately that he is opposed to
the ban and wants a ‘compromise’. The Prime Minister’s bluff has now
been called; he has been given the compromise he says he wants, and
it will be interesting to see whether he has the courage to deliver.
There’s been nothing unusual about the last two weeks. This is
how the Blair government carries on its business. Since it lacks any
self-belief, and no longer knows what it is for, it is forced to
operate through feint, quiet deals and deceit. New Labour is kept in
business only by its brute Commons majority, and even that is ever
more mutinous and distrustful.
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