POLITICS

Mr Blair's enemy isn't within, it's ahead

BRUCE ANDERSON

t may have been the most successful conference speech that Mr Blair will ever make. It was well-delivered and well-craft- ed, with hardly any of those verbless sen- tences which were intended to convey strength, but merely sounded irritating. It was also well-structured. The sections on the economy and on welfare were bound to displease many delegates. Few of them approve of paying good head teachers £60,000 or £70,000 a year and fewer still approve of sacking bad head teachers; there were probably a fair number of those in the hall. All that was dealt with in the first third of the speech. Thereafter, Mr Blair concentrated on his party's erogenous zones — Mo Mowlam, Third World aid, Nelson Mandela, the Stephen Lawrence case — and on its bogy-men, the Tories.

When he spoke last year, Mr Blair gave the impression that he still had to pinch himself to prove that he was not dreaming and that he actually was Prime Minister. His audience were still pinching themselves to make sure that they really had won a landslide and unseated Michael Portillo, and even this year, Mr Blair could still appeal to election night euphoria. Much of the hall may be uneasy about many aspects of Blairite policies, but that does not yet matter. Throughout his speech, Mr Blair's body language reinforced the frequent ref- erences to the Tories to convey the mes- sage that the Labour party most wants to hear: 'We've stuffed the Tories.'

So the delegates listened to a different speech from the one that the next day's newspapers reported; another instance of Mr Blair's cunning. By the time he sat down, most delegates had forgotten the passages which had not uplifted them, and had lost themselves in tribal enthusiasm. But then Alastair Campbell went into the press enclave to interpret the speech. He was instantly surrounded by such a flock of journalists and cameramen that others rushed towards the scene, thinking that Mr Blair himself must have arrived. Toughness and backbone were Mr Campbell's pre- ferred texts, and anyone inspired to draw comparisons with Mrs Thatcher in 1981 'You turn if you want to, the Lady's not for turning' — should feel free to indulge themselves. Hence some of the next day's headlines.

But when Mrs Thatcher gave her speech, Britain was already well into recession and the trade unions were still in a position to assail the central authority of the state, while the CBI was panicking as were some members of her Cabinet. Two years into government, the Tories had also realised that they had inherited an economy whose supply side was in an advanced state of sclerosis, and that the cure would require much more than the successful manage- ment of monetary policy. By the time of her `no turning back' speech, Mrs Thatcher was embattled on all fronts, and loving it.

Mr Blair would like us to believe that he is relishing similar challenges. In reality, this is an entirely rhetorical exercise, just as the Left whom he is supposed to have faced down is in no position to offer serious resis- tance. In Singapore, there is a leader of the opposition who is allowed to do some mini- mal campaigning during general elections, but spends much of the rest of his time in jail; the modern Labour Left plays a similar role.

Mr Blair has no wish to hasten its final extinction; from time to time, he finds it useful to pretend to have confronted it. But for the foreseeable future the Left is pow- erless, and knows it. There is an aura of defeat about the little handouts announcing that names from the past — Tony Benn, Stan Newens et al. — will be discussing top- ics from the past, such as the continuing relevance of socialism. These days, the for- mer giants of the conference hall are ban- ished to small hotels well outside the spin zone, the aging heroes of a lost war that the present generation can hardly remember. It may suit Mr Blair to treat them as serious figures; nobody else does.

He also welcomed the new Left, the Social Democrats who are now running 12 out of the other 14 nations of the EU. But almost all those Social Democratic govern- ments which Mr Blair is happy to welcome as colleagues have one thing in common. They believe in a single currency and in a federal Europe. If Mr Blair is serious about cooperating with them, as opposed to shar- ing photo-calls, he will have to embrace those goals.

His speech had one other noteworthy feature. It is hard for the generality of politicians to speak for almost an hour without offering some glimpses into their personality or some new information as to their views. But what others find difficult comes easily to Mr Blair; on Tuesday, he gave away almost nothing.

There was only one passage of the speech which offered a fresh, or at least a refreshed, insight. It concerned PR, which has been much discussed over the past few days. Needless to say, Mr Blair gave no clue as to what he himself believes, though there was a hint of irritation that he is stuck with a commitment to hold a refer- endum. His common sense tells him that he should find a way of dumping that pledge, but his vanity will not allow him to do so.

He did, however, address himself to Mr Ashdown, who had called him a 'control freak'. 'How could you say such a thing, Paddy,' was the joking tone, but the humour was only smile-deep. There was more than a hint of petulance.

Mr Blair's friends assure us he is fond of Mr Ashdown, but there was no fondness on display this week. It was more a matter of `If you ever call me a control freak again, Ashdown, you'll find out what the word means.' Mr Blair is a man who cannot bear to be crossed, especially if his opponent raises questions of principle. He cannot cope with arguments about principles, because he does not know what he believes.

The speech also contained some less basic examples of intellectual dishonesty. `What Tory government ever put £800 million into our poorest estates?' cried Mr Blair to loud cheers. The answer is simple: the last Tory government, which regularly spent that sort of sum, or even more, on the inner cities. There was only one problem: it appears to have done as little good for the inner cities as for the Tory candidates in inner city seats.

In the first, skated-over portion of the speech, Mr Blair did warn the delegates that the country was about to enter a diffi- cult period, and he is probably right. But we still do not have the least idea as to how he will cope, nor, one suspects, does he. The backbone rhetoric was not just designed to impress his party; Mr Blair was also trying to reassure himself that if he can talk tough, he can act tough. We shall see.

Anyone listening to Mr Blair might assume that his enemies are all in the past, and his hopes in the future. That may turn out to be the exact opposite of the truth. It may be that Mr Blair's real enemies are in the future.