#67: 'A Journey' by Tony Blair

 

Published by Hutchinson 2010

       Why read political memoirs?

I enjoy political memoirs. I find fascinating the inside story of a job I could never do, subject to astounding amounts of pressure, whose outside story I already know of through the media. I would group these memoirs into two – firstly diaries, like those of Alastair Campbell or Alan Clark. These are edited to be sure, but in Campbell’s case give some idea of the hothouse pressures under which decisions are made and policies developed and in Clark’s of what it’s like to be human and involved, with fluctuating enthusiasm, in Parliament’s politicking and procedure.

Published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd 1993

Then there are more reflective memoirs written once out of power such as Denis Healey’s Time of My Life. These are more profound and often less party political, but do not convey with such immediacy what it’s like to be in at the precious moment when action can be taken. In my experience they are also more sanitised and tactful than diaries; less honest about the ruthlessness needed to reach the top or about the behind-the-scenes negotiations which never reach the headlines.

Published by Penguin 1990

Tony Blair’s memoir

A Journey by Tony Blair is in the latter category. I picked it up by chance and ended up reading it more or less cover to cover. The book gives, among other things, a clear explanation of the New Labour project, of the reasons for Blair taking the country into the Iraq war, and on the negotiations leading to the Good Friday agreement of 1998.

New Labour

First, the New Labour project. Blair states more than once he was a willing heir to Margaret Thatcher’s dismantling of state monopolies, her cutting of taxes and weakening of unions. But Thatcher, he says, did not realise that the playing field for individual achievement is not level:

Where she was wrong… was in… her refusal to countenance the fact that the majority of people were always going to have to rely on public services and the power of government to get the opportunities they needed.… She just went too far in thinking everything could be reduced to individual choice. She was in that sense a very traditional Tory, but with the added impatience, like my dad, with anyone who hadn't succeeded – she had, so why hadn't they?

So spreading opportunity was part of New Labour. So was increasing competition for public service contracts to get more value for money, for example by inviting private companies to do NHS work for the first time. Other measures such as giving schools independence as academies were meant to encourage freedom in fulfilling these contracts.

The Northern Ireland peace process

Blair gives a detailed explanation of the Northern Ireland negotiations in 1998 and afterwards, and a 10-point crystallisation of lessons learned. Point 2 particularly struck me:

… The thing needs to be gripped and focused on. Continually. Inexhaustibly. Relentlessly. Day by day by day by day. The biggest problem with the Middle East peace process is that no one has ever gripped long enough or firmly enough.

The Iraq war

As someone who stood in London’s Haymarket for three hours in 2003 in an anti-Iraq war protest, I was interested to read about the build-up, execution (the easiest, quickest part) and aftermath of the Iraq war. Although Blair remains convinced of the rightness of the course, his mental jury is still out on whether he would have gone ahead, knowing how plans for rebuilding were brutally wrecked by Al Qaeda and Iran-backed forces. He takes Western protesters to task for being against UK and US efforts to rebuild the country, rather than protesting about Al Qaeda and Iran-backed suicide bombers sent into markets and churches, and soldiers, police, NGOs and civilians ‘gunned down, blown up, kidnapped and killed’.

When was there a single protest in any Western nation about such evil?… And where were the Iraqis’ Muslim brothers and sisters at their hour of need?

One consequence is that the these terrorists’ influence spread not only to the Middle East and Africa, but to ‘our own streets, on our airways, in the meeting places of our own nations, each country now obliged to spend billions each year in protecting ourselves against terror.

The civil service…and the media

The book also contains some interesting reflections on the outdated nature of the civil service as Blair found it – more attuned to giving policy advice in the shape of long-gestated papers than on the project management and delivery needed now. Thus the need for nimble, experienced special advisors able to handle ‘the pace of modern politics and the intrusion of media scrutiny [which means]… that decisions have to be made, positions taken, strategies worked out and communicated with the speed that is the speed of light compared to the speed of sound.’

It also makes clear how difficult it is to work with a media which goes into frenzies about an MP’s affair or bogus expenses claims, at the expense of publicising government policies which will affect people’s day-to-day lives but offer much less juicy stories.

Doing not saying

Lastly, the book is good on how much harder it is to be in power than in opposition. In opposition your prerogative is to criticise, in power you have to actually make the difficult changes:

We were very quickly appreciating the daunting revelation of the gap between saying and doing. In Opposition, the gap is nothing because ‘saying’ is all you can do; in government, where ‘doing’ it’s what it’s all about, the gap is suddenly revealed as a chasm of bureaucracy, frustration and disappointment.

He also criticises the Liberal Democrats for not being up for this ‘doing’:

… the Lib Dems seemed to be happier as the ‘honest’ critics, prodding and probing and pushing, but unwilling to take on the mantle of responsibility for the hard choices and endure the rough passages.

Fourteen years later…

So how has the book fared in the 14 years since it was published? With a Labour landslide likely in the UK general election this year, perhaps even bigger than Blair’s in 1997, how does it compare with what the two main parties are offering, as I understand it?

I don’t detect any overall cohesive vision such as Blair describes from either of the main two parties – more a set of separate, piecemeal policies such as Sunak’s recent smoking ban. In fact, I’ve not detected such a vision in any election since 2005. For example, Cameron’s ‘common sense revolution’ of 2010, aimed at allowing police, teachers and doctors more scope to make their own decisions, was not as ambitious in trying to reform the actual structure of those organisations as Blair was. Nor was it set inside a vision of Britain’s continuing place in Europe and the world. (Perhaps the nearest to this was Boris Johnson’s vow to ‘get Brexit done’ which won him the 2019 election, which was connected with a vision of Britain in an international context).

Some issues loom larger as well. I will pick out a couple. Illegal immigration is even more visible, with the daily arrival of small boats across the Channel. Blair says asylum claims exploded from 30,000 per year to 100,000 per year in 1998 and 1999, most claims not being genuine, and the ‘broken’ processing system, still based on a post-war model, not able to cope. Numbers are similar now (just over 80,000 in 2022).

Secondly, despite the Blair government’s introduction of the minimum wage, today’s exploitative gig economy continues and I would guess is more widespread than in Blair’s time, due partly to globalisation and new technologies. Neither party has promised to fully implement the 2017 Taylor Report into modern working practices, although Labour has said it will strengthen self-employed workers’ rights, promising to ban or at least allow opt-out from zero hours contracts.

I’m not sure if political programmes always do need an all-encompassing vision. But in my view Britain, like all countries, does need a strong sense of identity which can unite a greater part of the population. In the introduction Blair says:

… the British people are, at their best, brave, determined and adventurous. But… we need a vision, a concept, a sense of our place in the world today and in future, as well as strong regard for our past.

I agree that it is part of the task of government to encourage such a vision and sense of place, not just through words but through actions. For anyone interested in how the Blair government tried to do this, this book is a very good starting point.

Published by Random House 2007