Tony Blair may join Thatcher in history by winning a third term, but can he see it out with Gordon Brown waiting in the wings, asks Frank Millar, London Editor
It's been called the "hug of death", and by the end of the first full week of election campaigning it must surely be choking Tony Blair. The British prime minister finds himself in an incredible situation. Here he is, generally expected to enter the pantheon alongside Margaret Thatcher, the only politician in modern times to win three successive elections. Yet it seems not to matter that he is already Labour's history man, the only one to deliver the party two full successive terms in power. Former cabinet colleague Robin Cook raised himself this week and boldly suggested that, short of Tony Blair increasing his present massive majority in the House of Commons, "it is hard to see an outcome that will not leave [ Gordon] Brown a stronger figure".
The idea of Gordon "riding to the rescue" is certainly enough to have Tony and Cherie choking over their porridge. Yet that is the perception that has taken hold, even as the most cautious polls suggest another substantial Labour majority after eight years in office, and as the prime minister predicts "New Labour" will survive him under an alternative leader into a fourth term.
"Buy Blair, get Brown", Labour doubters are being assured, as Guardian great Polly Toynbee offers clothes pegs to stick on their noses to help overcome the pain and distress of doing so.
"It's the real deal this time," one of Britain's most respected journalists assured The Irish Times at the Conservative manifesto launch on Monday. "Blair will be gone by Christmas."
In this benign Brownite scenario, the Chardonnay-quaffing classes attacked by Commons leader Peter Hain last weekend will, in the end, refuse to cut off their noses to spite their collective face. Interestingly, Jack Straw (for the time being at least foreign secretary) declined to follow this particular assault on Labour's own chattering classes, presumably because he knows Chardonnay is quite common even in the less rarefied environs of his Blackburn constituency.
No matter: the point is that the doubters - distrustful of Blair's ready embrace of his Thatcherite inheritance and his enthusiasm for public service "reform", yearning for a Labour party more overtly committed to "social justice" and unforgiving about the war in Iraq - will rally to what Cook says has been "a decisive shift in the balance of power" between Blair and Brown in the short time since the election was called. And once the government is re-elected, so the theory goes, Blair's remaining powers of patronage and control will ebb away as surely as he will honour his commitment not to stick around to seek a fourth mandate.
In this respect, it might be said that Blair has only himself to blame. It was never really to his credit - nor did it mark him out as the superior politician - that Brown sulked so long and often about the supposed original Granita restaurant deal, following the death of John Smith, when Blair allegedly secured Brown's support for the leadership in return for the promise that he would hand over the keys to Number 10 sometime during a second term. Likewise, when the Conservatives' less than successful performance in last year's local and European elections apparently persuaded Blair he could survive the war after all, the thought occurred in respect of Brown: "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." Yet it was Blair himself, facing a heart operation immediately after Labour's party conference last September, who chose to confide to the nation via the BBC that he would seek a third term but not a fourth.
BIZARRELY, THIS WAS followed by the decision to sack Brown from his traditional post in charge of Labour's election planning, and to rub additional salt into the wound by replacing him with old adversary Alan Milburn. No sooner was this coup effected than seemingly authoritative reports appeared in the press that Milburn had been tasked to prepare an "unremittingly New Labour" manifesto for the third term. Rather than banging on about the party's past achievements, this would prioritise Blair's drive to introduce greater choice, competition and private provision in the delivery of health and education. And in case anyone failed to grasp the prime minister's determination to cast his final cabinet in his own image, it was said that once the election was over Brown would be forced out of the treasury power base he has extended across much of Whitehall and be given a choice: the foreign office or the backbenches.
The inevitable resulting sulk this time lasted until shortly before Blair travelled to Buckingham Palace on April 5th to formally ask Queen Elizabeth to dissolve parliament. Until the weekend before, there were doubts as to whether Brown would be playing a central role or campaigning solo. Yet no sooner was the election called than prime minister and chancellor appeared joined at the hip, with the economy centre-stage as Brown had always maintained it had to be.
The Brownite take on this is that the early polls, suggesting a Tory surge and that lack of "trust" in the prime minister was the biggest impediment to a Labour victory, forced Blair to blink first. Authoritative Blairites insist to the contrary that Labour's economic record was always going to be the party's central election theme, but that "Gordon simply refused to play" before finally realising, as one insider puts it, "that disloyalty would not play well with the party electorate who will eventually choose the new leader". The "plague on both their houses" analysis suggests that, as so often before, Blair and Brown were forced by the realpolitik of swimming, or sinking, together.
Indeed, the temper and tantrums that so often characterise this relationship at the heart of the Labour government are a mystery to outsiders. For, as Cook observed in his London Evening Standard article, "the success of New Labour was always built on a partnership between the two men at the top. Blair had a matchless skill at reaching out to the aspirant, middle classes and reassuring them that Labour was not too threatening. Brown appealed to the core Labour vote and could convince them that their traditional values, such as fairness, were his priorities too. Blair and Brown came as a package. They were Rolls and Royce, Marks & Spencer and, in regional terms of their constituencies, the Scottish and Newcastle of British politics."
So, on Wednesday, everything went swimmingly as the chancellor embraced a manifesto not so "unremittingly" New Labour as to frighten the traditional Labour horses, and pledged to "embed" the "progressive consensus" which the prime minister informed us combined economic prosperity and social justice without ever confusing the means with the ends.
Nor was the manifesto lacking in ambition or commitments for action on everything from the rebuilding or refurbishment of all secondary schools; an extra two million homeowners; expansion of the motorways; a 205 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions; fewer deaths from heart disease, strokes and cancer; new laws on guns and knives, increased electronic tagging and a crackdown on organised crime; a tough new points system for migrants coupled with falling asylum numbers; completion of House of Lords reform; a 2 per cent inflation rate to keep interest rates and mortgages low; new frontiers in child care, early learning and care of the elderly; more British children lifted out of poverty; international agreement on universal access to AIDS treatment by 2010. Oh yes, plus leadership in Europe, UN reform and a Middle East peace settlement.
This was satisfyingly substantial for those who like their manifestos detailed, especially after the comparatively thin Tory offering reduced to an 11-word cover for those who like to keep their election reading to just two seconds: "More police, cheaper hospitals, lower taxes, school discipline, controlled immigration, accountability." However, Labour's programme is accompanied by a big boast (articulated by Brown) that the 1997 settlement (when Labour came to power) will in time be seen as important as the 1945 settlement: "Enabling not corporatist or controlling government, but enterprise, markets and labour flexibility. An empowering, not a dependency welfare state. Not monolithic, top down or impersonal, but personal to all." Brown may hope this will prove his inheritance from Blair. But they have both far still to travel. The prime minister knows he wasted a lot of time in his first term, before seeing his second hijacked by the events of 9/11 and all that flowed from that day in terms of Afghanistan, Iraq and the "war" on terror.
THE CURRENT ECONOMIC debate may have been becalmed by the original decision to give the Bank of England independence, and by the fact that the Conservatives feel obliged to match Labour's spending commitments in all the key areas. However, the government's achievements have been patchy and the "world class services" promised in 2001 remain just that - a promise. And a more fundamental debate could open up next time if Labour's increased spending (almost certainly unsustainable) coupled with still-promised reforms fail to make a third the "delivery" term.
Of course, Tony Blair wants to be remembered for something more than winning elections and that war. But he cannot yet claim that he has permanently changed the British political landscape in the manner of Attlee and Thatcher before him. And as Peter Riddell observed in the London Times, that Blair's goals and record are less clear-cut is revealed by the search for new overarching themes: first the Third Way and, now, the Progressive Consensus.
Which brings us back to the question of Blair's point of departure and the succession. The prime minister's place in history obviously matters to him, and at this writing it is far from certain that the Belfast Agreement will go down as one of his enduring achievements. Might he be content to go after winning a referendum on the European Constitution? One well-placed Brown supporter cheerfully anticipates a possible French "No" and offers that this means "there would be even less reason for him [ Blair] to stick around".
However, this source sounded less convincing following Wednesday's manifesto launch and Blair's insistence that if elected he will serve a "full" term: "That's for the birds. He has to say that. It will all come down to the size of the majority." Yet, when asked directly, Brown suggested that Blair was indeed a man of his word. If he is to be trusted, this raises the intriguing possibility that prime minister Blair actually might think to continue alongside a new Labour leader elected in the final months of the next parliament - with Brown only getting to be prime minister after winning his own mandate.
As for those who wouldn't trust Blair as far as they could throw him, they would surely have to concede that it's entirely possible Tony could still think to deny his new best friend thrice.