How does Tony survive? Eloquence, unction and the abuse of power
No prime minister, with the debatable exception of Anthony Eden, has been held in such low private esteem by senior civil servants as Tony Blair. Cabinet secretaries Robin Butler and Richard Wilson have delivered withering public verdicts on the slipshod way government now conducts its business. So have senior officials like Michael Quinlan and former ambassadors like Rodric Braithwaite.
Meanwhile Downing Street has fostered a novel species of accommodating officials. The DTI permanent secretary Robin Young, rather too happy to engage in Blairite political intrigue, is one. Jeremy Heywood, the Downing Street private secretary who adapted so readily to Tony Blair’s sofa government, is another. Alex Allan, the civil servant responsible for a patronage system which generated this month’s shameful list of working peers (also approved by Lord Stevenson of Coddenham), is the most recent addition. It has been said for some time, by people in a reasonable position to know, that the going rate for a peerage under New Labour is about £250,000. This latest collection of names lends substance to that shocking claim.
The memoirs of Sir Christopher Meyer, former British ambassador in Washington, can only be understood in this squalid context. A government counter-attack is under way against Sir Christopher. He is being criticised for lack of discretion. In normal circumstances this rebuke would certainly carry weight. But it should be borne in mind that it was Tony Blair himself who invented the new culture of betrayal and distrust. As Michael Ashcroft has described in painstaking detail in an important new book, government spin doctors made use of Foreign Office papers to discredit him when he was Tory party treasurer. This kind of smear, sometimes accompanied by the abuse of official information, has become common practice under New Labour. Tony Blair allowed the greatest betrayal of all: his principal aide Alastair Campbell was permitted to keep a diary, with intent to publish, from the day he entered Downing Street. Meyer can at the very least claim that he was getting his retaliation in first.
The importance of the Meyer book is very great, and it is hard to see how Tony Blair’s reputation will ever recover. Meyer’s picture of a prime minister on the eve of war confirms much that we had already surmised from the Hutton inquiry: Tony Blair as lead er of a crony government, uninterested in detail, scornful of proper process, neglectful of the substantial issues. The Prime Minister seems to have resented the British ambassador in Washington’s access to the White House. He tried, for example, to exclude him from meetings with the American President, attempting to insert his press secretary at the top table instead.
All this is familiar. New and shocking is the sheer scale of genuflection before President Bush. The thought never seems to cross Tony Blair’s mind that the United Kingdom is an independent state, with discrete interests and values of our own. The British Prime Minister’s parting instruction to Meyer, issued through the chief of staff Jonathan Powell, was wretched: ‘Get up the arse of the White House and stay there.’ This remark displays a fatal misunderstanding of the so-called special relationship. Margaret Thatcher, though accused of being too close to Ronald Reagan, was never afraid to take him on. By contrast, Meyer and others would brief Tony Blair about tough points to raise in meetings, then look at each other in despair when he failed to play his negotiating hand. One major reason for the fiasco of the Iraq invasion was the failure to plan for the aftermath of victory. Britain was the only ally of the United States which could have remedied this omission. Thanks to what can only be regarded as negligence by the Prime Minister, we failed to do so. ‘Had Britain so insisted,’ says Meyer in a deadly comment, ‘Iraq after Saddam might have avoided the violence that may yet prove fatal to the entire enterprise.’ Shot through and discredited though he is, the Prime Minister survives. Though very few serious people still regard Tony Blair as much better than an empty and dishonest figure, he retains a kind of equilibrium. The events of last week, from the resignation of David Blunkett through to Wednesday’s terrorism debate, are a textbook example of this resilience. It is interesting to pause to examine how Tony Blair manages it.
First: eloquence. Even Labour MPs who are hostile to the Prime Minister say that his speech to the Parliamentary Labour party last Monday evening was quite exceptional. The Prime Minister has the capacity to change the mood at Westminster, and he pulled off that magic trick again last week.
Second: abuse of power. On Monday afternoon, as the government position hardened, MPs were suddenly bombarded with calls from chief constables supporting the government position. These calls were clearly co-ordinated by Downing Street, and this is troubling. It is not the job of policemen and women to act as the propaganda arm of any administration, even if they agree with its policies. The Prime Minister asked the intelligence services to perform the same sort of trick for him on the eve of the Iraq war, with a disastrous long-term effect on their reputation.
Third: the right allies. The key to the success of Tony Blair has, right from the start of his premiership, been Rupert Murdoch. The News International titles, and in particular the Sun and the News of the World, have been formidable in their support.
The Spectator went to press before Wednesday afternoon’s cliffhanger votes in the Commons. Nevertheless, the way Tony Blair hauled himself back from the nearhopeless position he found himself in last weekend was breathtaking. By Wednesday he had created a state of affairs where he could claim a kind of victory either way. Even if the government lost the vote on its 90-day detention for terrorist suspects, Tony Blair will be able to point the finger at the Tory party and blame them for future security shortfalls.
Nevertheless, the Prime Minister’s powers of recovery are fading. Every week brings fresh signs that his authority has weakened. Last week Hilary Benn was offered the post of welfare secretary in the wake of the resignation of David Blunkett. Benn turned the offer down, even though it represented clear promotion from his current job at International Development. Benn must have calculated that it would be invidious to fight Blairite battles against the Treasury; much better to stay put till Gordon Brown takes over. The Prime Minister lacked both the power and the menace to force Benn to make the move.
The second evidence of fading prime ministerial power was more interesting still. It has become apparent that Gus O’Donnell, the new Cabinet Secretary, played a major role in forcing David Blunkett out of office last week. In his pomp, Tony Blair ignored his first three Cabinet secretaries — Butler, Wilson and Andrew Turnbull. O’Donnell took over in the summer, promising to pay special attention to the neglected issue of Cabinet integrity. There are signs that, as Tony Blair’s personal authority wanes, the era of crony government may at last be coming to a close.
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