Intelligence

4: Blair’s Great Escapes

4: Blair’s Great Escapes - [Sunday Herald]

It was meant to be his toughest week in politics, but while Tony has emerged victorious, he is in no way unscathed. Westminster Editor James Cusick reports

It was the predicted political funeral that turned into an escapology festival. Five narrow votes clinched victory, a whiter-than-white, squeaky-clean, guilt-free verdict from Lord Hutton and tear-filled resignations to enjoy from his BBC enemies as they fell on their swords. If this is what can happen in the toughest week of his political life, Tony Blair can be forgiven for believing he is invincible.
But in the wake of his Commons victory, and amid the stench of panic that is now emanating from the corporate corridors of the BBC, Blair’s victories seem to have been achieved with hidden costs whose price has yet to be determined.

In Blair’s moment of triumph at the dispatch box on Wednesday, he told a disarmed and disappointed Conservative leader, Michael Howard, that: “Yesterday was a test of policy and he failed. Today is a test of character and he failed that too.” Blair, however, could just as easily have turned his accusations around and faced them himself. The government may have won the vote on tuition fees by five votes – 316 to 311 – but it was no policy triumph for a party with a 161 majority.

As the tension began to ease visibly from Blair’s face and his body language in the Commons began to resemble a death-row inmate who’d just been marched back to his cell after a last-minute reprieve, Blair seemed to know his escape would be followed by an equally impressive leap to freedom when Lord Hutton delivered the next day. The heightened enjoyment going on inside Blair’s mind would have been immense.

But j ust how hard Blair had to work behind the scenes, and what that will cost him in terms of authority, is only now beginning to be teased out. Tony Blair may still be the Prime Minister, but “the adventures of Tony Blair”, as one MP put it, “are now over”.

At 12.40pm on Tuesday, when the education secretary opened the debate on top-up fees for the government, Blair was more confident of winning the vote that would take place in just over six hours’ time than he had been for a month. Although the Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott had told the BBC’s Today programme that morning that the government was on course to lose the vote, Prescott did not know that Blair, the Chancellor Gordon Brown and one of the main architects of the rebellion, Nick Brown, were about to meet in hastily arranged peace talks.

Nick Brown is widely regarded as the Chancellor’s lieutenant on the back benches; fiercely Brownite and loyal to the Chancellor – normally. But on variable tuition fees, Nick Brown was saying, even on Monday night, that this was “a matter of principle”.

Gordon Brown had, it was said, previously tried to reel in Nick Brown. Brown, a former chief whip, appeared not only to resist his master’s advice, but to be recruiting and encouraging the rebellion. He was also resisting the notion that a defeated vote on tuition fees would be a disastrous result for the government. When the three met early on Tuesday morning, the tone of the Chancellor’s advice is said to have changed. One source said: “The meeting was open, frank and brutal and Nick Brown was left with no choice. It wasn’t a long discussion.”

The implication is that the whips’ office arithmetic was explained to Brown. The government would lose the vote and because of Nick Brown’s loyalty to Gordon Brown, the Chancellor would be blamed for the defeat, the party would be damaged, and thus any prospect of a bloodless succession, with leadership passing to the Chancellor, would be in jeopardy. Brown was ordered to publicly change his mind and to make the announcement as soon as he could.

When Tom Kelly, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman, spoke at 3.45pm to parliamentary journalists, he came prepared to knock down the excuses that Brown had given for changing his mind. By that time Blair and his advisers had been reading Hutton for almost three hours and knew Blair was off all hooks. Brown of course had mentioned nothing of his meeting with the Prime Minister and Chancellor, instead saying he’d been told of last-minute new concessions.

Kelly said this was all nonsense. Talk of new money being on the table? There was no new money. Talk of an independent inquiry looking at the impact of fees? There was no inquiry, merely a department of education report. Talk of a review of the entire idea of variability (which Brown had said was crucial in getting him to change his mind)? No, there was no such offer. Kelly was clear the review would take place three years after variability had been introduced, adding: “There are no new concessions.”

In his speech during the debate, Nick Brown said he still had his “four-fold” objections to the bill as it stood. Although he insisted his views had not been influenced by Gordon Brown, they had been. Another back-bench colleague said: “This re-defection back to the government was not that surprising. Gordon Brown knew a few votes could make a crucial difference – to Gordon Brown. And Nick Brown’s principles? Oh Christ, what were they again, I forgot.”

Blair’s political instinct, developed in nearly 10 years as leader of the Labour Party, told him that victory, even by one vote, was victory nonetheless. But needing only 81 to vote against the government, and the Labour revolt only falling a handful short of that, showed the scale of split on the government benches. And while Gordon Brown was shown to have less of an influence on the outcome than many in the PLP had expected, what Brown had shown was a clear ability to determine the outcome of such close votes. Just as Blair knows one vote was enough to win, he also knows one vote was enough to lose.

The sight of one of Brown’s close supporters, pointing to a rebel who had apparently had a change of mind and then quietly saying “what a bastard”, indicates the complexity of Labour’s pro-Brown, pro-Blair split. But one former Cabinet adviser was clear on what mattered. “Gordon couldn’t be seen to have contributed to the defeat, no matter if that were true or not. That would have meant open disloyalty and the party would have made him pay for that.

On Tuesday morning, nobody knew Hutton would be so pro-government. But there was a possibility that, had Blair lost the education vote, with Gordon seen as a contributing factor, then had Hutton gloriously cleared Downing Street – as it did –Blair would have had every justification in getting rid of the Chancellor. Would he have done so? Hell knows. But what is clear is that Brown turning Brown made the difference – and that weakens Blair not Brown.”

By Friday, having survived the knife-edged tuition fee vote by five, and then escaping all criticism in Hutton, Blair attempted his version of public contrition. In future, he would do things differently, he had no remaining secret plans, there would be more social democratic context to his domestic agenda, he would learn this lesson, there would be no more top-down policy. Translation? “I’m really, sincerely, sorry. I mean, I promise I’ll ask first before doing anything else, honest.”

But this apology-in-trust failed to disguise that although he was still Prime Minister, although he was still in power after the ultimate 24-hour test of his premiership, his authority was weakened and the policy “adventures” would stop. Another MP said: “Blair has been leader since 1994. This summer he’ll have been running the Labour Party for 10 years; a decade at the top. And there is already speculation that is the focus of the deal that’s been done with Gordon. Blair survived the week, kept his reputation and his record and kept the party at least unified from the outside. Last week that looked a good outcome.”

The extent of Blair’s eroded authority was beginning to show itself, with the champagne glasses barely dry from the post-Hutton celebrations. A strengthened Blair would have seen little advantage in gloating over the post-Hutton resignation frenzy of Gavyn Davies and Greg Dyke – both one-time friends of the Blairs – and then Andrew Gilligan himself. A strengthened Blair would have reeled in Alastair Campbell, who was positively revelling in the blood-spilling and encouraging more. And a strong Blair could have personally offered reassurances that a rudderless, demoralised BBC had not been a prime government objective. Instead, Tessa Jowell, the culture secretary, offered lightweight reassurances about the BBC’s future with John Reid, the health secretary, playing again the high moral card in his hushed serious tones.

But Blair is paying for Hutton’s complete exoneration. In a kind of reverse revenge, media and political attention has returned to the one issue Blair has resolutely avoided post-war. The question Hutton said he wouldn’t address, is being re-addressed by the media given the extraordinary noises now coming out of Washington on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

A weakened Blair will also embolden his Cabinet colleagues to demand that their version of how to return lost trust and an air of competence to the government is given full consideration.

In an interview with The Times yesterday, Peter Hain took advantage of the post-Hutton vacuum by demanding that Blair honour commitments in Labour’s last election manifesto. Hain, the leader of the Commons, revived the debate over the shape of the reformed House of Lords. He insisted the government should “be seen to keep its promises”, adding: “There is a trust issue for the government and a trust deficit as a whole.” Hain, with a reputation as a maverick able to speak his own mind outside the remit of collective Cabinet responsibility, has in the past delivered unauthorised views on tax and Europe. His latest outburst appears timed to put the Lords reform issue back into public view.

But with Blair’s authority dented, Hain’s resurrection of an issue Downing Street thought it had buried or kicked into the long grass, indicates other issues – such as the UK’s side-lined entry to the euro – could resurface.

Hain told The Times he was concerned over a second chamber that was completely appointed – or filled with “Tony’s cronies”, as critics have suggested. But on Blair’s wider problems, Hain said the government had to accept some blame of what he called the “corrosive cynicism” inside Britain’s political culture . He suggested that if the government, the media and the opposition “did not solve the problem together” it would be a “problem for democracy”.

However, in the week that he survived a Commons vote and cleared the hurdle of Hutton, only to find himself back to square one on the issue of Iraq’s missing WMD, a philosophical analysis of Britain’s democratic deficit might not head Blair’s priorities. An invincible Prime Minister always has better things to worry about.

February 6, 2004 at 11:08 PM in UK | Permalink | TrackBack (22) | Top of page | Blog Home