19 MAY 2001, Page 9

Mr Blair is offering us a significantly more expensive version of the same

BRUCE ANDERSON

Sooner or later, all governments and all prime ministers grow oppressed by the intractability of events, When he takes office, every PM must feel heady with power. He has hundreds of billions of pounds to spend, hundreds of thousands of civil servants to carry out his instructions, and — especially in Mr Blair's case — hundreds of obedient MPs who will ensure that any new laws he may require are rapidly enacted. With all those assets, are there any limits to a British prime minister's omnipotence?

Yes there are. The new prime minister quickly finds that all the King's horses and all the King's men cannot obtain a hip operation for old Granny Bloggins. Nor can they ensure that the toe-rag who is terrorising the old dear's neighbour is put where he belongs: in custody. At some stage, every modern prime minister has felt like issuing the same despairing cry: so much to spend, so little to show for it.

Naturally enough, no such pessimism is allowed to disfigure Labour's Manifesto. But there are hints that Labour ministers have come to realise that there is no direct relationship between the level of public expenditure and the quality of public services. `Money alone cannot guarantee a good education,' we are told, in a section which ends with a bold pledge: 'We will radically modernise comprehensive schools.'

There, New Labour is up to its old tricks. Isaiah Berlin concluded that `The great goods cannot always live together', but Tony Blair knows better. Two desiderata appear to be in contradiction? Just commit yourself to both. So, on the one hand, `The principles of inclusion and equality of opportunity remain central to our commitment to liberate the potential of every child.' But further down the page: `We want every secondary school to develop a distinct ethos, mission and centre of excellence.' Labour will also 'allow greater involvement in schools by outside organisations with a serious contribution to make to raising standards'.

The two latter objectives are admirable, but they cannot be reconciled either with comprehensivism or with equality of opportunity. If Labour is sincere, it intends to ensure that competition between schools becomes part of the dynamic of British education. If this were to happen, most children would receive a better education than they do now, but it would not be an equal one. After all, every independent school already has a distinct ethos and mission. Does anyone believe that an education at a minor public school is equal to one at Eton or Winchester?

In health, there are also glimmers of radicalism. The authors insist that 'the NHS has to earn the confidence of each new generation', and that 'it needs far-reaching reform to redesign its services around the needs of patients'. But if that is so, is it useful to think in terms of a national health service? No one would contemplate a national food service, and inasmuch as we ever had a national education service, it is dying out, unmourned by the Blairites. By talking about the NHS, we confuse the provision of health with the maintenance of an antiquated and inefficient bureaucratic structure. It would clarify the mind if we dropped the 'national service' and concentrated on health.

This brings us to the central weakness of Labour's re-election strategy. The Manifesto's authors identified a problem, and then shied away from solving it. They are entitled to a modicum of credit, in that it cannot have been easy for any of them to overcome their own prejudices sufficiently to be able to confront the weaknesses of the public sector. But it remains a covert confrontation. This government is like a surgeon who opens up a patient in the confident expectation of performing a routine operation, but who then discovers that the condition is much more serious than he had realised. So he wonders what to do next, and then decides. He sews the patient up again. Mr Blair talks 'of a radical programme of British renewal'. When it comes to the public services, he is offering nothing of the kind. He is offering a significantly more expensive version of more of the same.

Yet the public services sections of the Manifesto are easily the strongest. Much more effort was directed to them than to the outlying regions, where there is some ripe old nonsense to be savoured. Try this, for instance: 'Labour is pledged to a rural services standard to set out specifically what rural people can expect from 21 public service providers.' Some cleverclogs wrote that sentence, and felt pleased with himself for doing so. He had an excuse, in that he was very young. But some older persons would then have vetted the prose, among them Alastair Campbell and probably even Tony Blair. And no one saw how ludicrous it was. If New Labour's opponents wish to sum marise its incomprehension of the countryside, they will now find that the Blairites have done the job for them. A party capable of such bog-standard bureaucratese in its Election Manifesto is a party which believes that the answer to every problem is an official with a stack of forms.

For the Tory party, there is a simple response. They must now help Labour to get its Manifesto message across to the countryside. Those 21 public service providers could be worth many thousands of votes.

But the sections on the Constitution are the weakest of all. One might have thought that, after four years in office, Labour would be in a position to tell us about the new House of Lords. It would be interesting to know the 'distinct ethos, mission and centre of excellence' which it ought to embody. On that, the Manifesto is silent, and we know why. This government has spent four years assailing the Upper House's membership and undermining its dignity, with limited success. With even less success, it has tried to undermine their Lordships' independence, and that is the unfinished battle.

A new House worthy of the name and legacy and thus able to discharge its constitutional responsibilities would be able to thwart Mr Blair's whims and tell him things which he did not wish to hear. That he cannot abide. So his Manifesto commits him to a spatchcock House: a chamber of cronies, with a pathetic electoral fig-leaf to conceal its corruption. In effect, he is telling us that he will go on reforming the House of Lords until its members display the same mental vigour as the average Labour backbencher.

The section on Northern Ireland contains an ominous omission, a further shying away, in that there is no reference to decommissioning of weaponry. This suggests that there will be a seamless continuity in policy from the last Parliament to the next one: from the evasions of the past to the failures of the future. If Mr Blair lacks the moral courage to commit himself to decommissioning in his Manifesto, he lacks the moral courage to sustain the peace process.

Apropos of projects overdue for decommissioning, there is one understated admission in this document, which is also a portent. We are informed that 'the Dome did not fulfil expectations'. In four years' time, that will be the epitaph for Labour's entire public services project — and the price of failure will be somewhat greater.