The Tony Blair decade

Consensus and triumph came at the cost of ideology.

from the May 9, 2007 edition

Paul Lachine

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St. Andrews, Scotland - Last Friday morning, Britain awoke to the devastation of war. The destruction came not in villages leveled and lives destroyed, but in the annihilation of a political party. Though Labour still retains control of Parliament, Tony Blair's party was reduced to a smoking ruin in nationwide council elections.

It's a sorry end for Mr. Blair, who says he's ready to step down after a decade as prime minister. The man who re-invented the socialist Labour Party into a modern, third-way political dynamo now sees the Iraq war dismantling one of the most formidable political machines in British history.

When anger fades and regret settles in, historians will judge the Iraq war a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. Blair is not the first leader to disregard the complicated political history of the Middle East, but Britons expected better of this deeply intelligent man. Despite all the evidence of perfidy, he seems to have had a noble purpose, but that makes his failure all the more tragic. He believed that Britain, because of its historical status, was duty bound to intervene and that it was uniquely placed to act as a moderating influence on President Bush. Mr. Bush, however, was immune to moderation. British statecraft was crushed by American adventurism.

The Iraq fiasco muddles the assessment of Blair's otherwise enormously successful prime ministership. Without the war, Labour would still dominate the polls, and the fate of the Tory Party leader David Cameron would look painfully similar to that of his three hapless predecessors. The past 10 years have brought genuine Labour dominance, and the Tories no longer seem to be the natural party of government.

That achievement will in time come to dwarf the Iraq debacle. The Blair decade will rightly be seen as a revolution in British politics more profound and long- lasting than that of Margaret Thatcher. When I came to Britain in 1980, Ms. Thatcher had cleaved the country, dividing the population into "them" and "us." Politics was a ritual of identity, an expression of antagonism. One knew whom to hate by the sound of their accent.

Today, thanks to Blair, issues are blurred, labels largely irrelevant. Class and party lines are no longer precisely drawn. Tory politicians pretend to be progressive, while Labour promotes illiberal policies such as identity cards and electronic tagging. The word "socialism" is hardly ever used, certainly never with sincerity.

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