MUCH TO BOAST ABOUT BUT MUCH TO FEAR

Mr Blair's purpose is to stay in office for ten years (at least). What could stop him is that he may have no purpose other than that, says Peter Oborne THERE WAS never meant to be an event to celebrate the first 100 days of the Tony Blair administration — which makes it all the more extraordinary that one is to go ahead next week. TIN Prime Minister made it quite clear that he was against the idea from the moment he entered Downing Street on 1 May. He told friends that he was wary of comparisons with Kennedy or, worse still, with the early months of Harold Wilson. The Blair government, he declared, was about the first 1,000 days, not just the first few months. The last thing he wanted was early fireworks which fizzled out into a sense of anti-climax. The Prime Minister, these friends insist, is running in a marathon, not a sprint.

This month, for example, he will be taking a three-week break in Tuscany. His prede- cessor John Major never dared escape for more than two weeks. Perhaps it would have been better if he had. A few days was Margaret Thatcher's limit. Mr Blair takes a more grown-up approach. He is pacing him- self. He is obsessed by the fail- ure of any previous Labour administrations to survive much more than one term of office. He aims to put that right. He does not want to burn himself out, any more than he wants any premature triumphalism.

But as the government's lead widened in the polls during the early weeks, and as everything the government touched seemed to turn to gold, the pressure mounted. 'We are slightly taken aback by how well it has all gone. We've not had an economic crisis. We haven't had a big resignation. The prob- lems we predicted simply haven't hap- pened,' said one senior member of the government. It's unbelievable really. So we wanted to mark the occasion.'

Eventually, after pressure from old Labour in the shape of John Prescott and New Labour in the more seemly shape of Peter Mandelson, the Prime Minister buckled. And now Saturday 9 August has been set aside for a joint Prescott/Mandel- son festive occasion in which the great achievements of the early weeks of the Blair era will be celebrated in a fully-fledged Labour party event. Mr Mandelson's beloved Millbank machine — neglected since general election day on 1 May — is humming with excitement once more at the prospect of arranging it all.

It would be idle to deny that there is much to boast about. Tony Blair may not have changed Britain for good — yet. But he has made all the difference. The mood of the country has changed. There is a new optimistic spirit about. Abroad, the Prime Minister has forged a new and strong rela- tionship with President Clinton. As he promised, he has taken Britain. into the heart of Europe. At home, a start has already been made on fulfilling pledges to reform the education system and the wel- fare state. Most striking of all, Tony Blair's proposals to change the way in which Britain is governed are already well- advanced. Between them, devolution for Scotland and Wales, abolition of the voting rights of hereditary peers, independence for the Bank of England, proportional repre- sentation and the incorporation of a Euro- pean Convention of Human Rights into British law amount to the most sweeping changes since the constitutional settlement of 1689.

Compare and contrast Harold Wilson's first 100 days 30 years ago. The government was close to a shambles by the time they were up. The defeat of Patrick Gordon- Walker in the Leyton by-election had forced an emergency reshuffle. As the Crossman diaries make harrowingly clear, the death of Winston Churchill in late Jan- uary 1965 came as an immense relief to the Wilson Cabinet because it distracted atten- tion from real politics for a fortnight.

All this, impressive though it undoubted- ly is, may not be the greatest achievement of the new administration. Tony Blair's finest quality is that he is not John Major, and the most important asset of the New Labour government is that it isn't Tory. None of this is lost on New Labour's spin-doctors. They are determined to go on reminding the voters at every opportunity that Tony Blair is not a Tory. Just as suc- cessive Conservative administrations milked Jim Callaghan's 'Winter of Discon- tent' for all it was worth, Tony Blair's media savants, Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson, are determined to turn John Major's government, and its trade- mark qualities of sleaze, arrogance and incompetence into a folk memory of equal power. As the next general election approaches, they aim to compare the New Labour Millennium with the Tory 'Dark Ages'.

The strategy is working well so far, and has been aided by the absence of anything resembling an effective Conservative oppo- sition. This means that the government appears able to get away with everything. The former Tory Education Secretary, Gillian Shephard, would have been devoured if she had tried to implement the Dearing report by charging fees for univer- sity students. The Tory Chancellor, Ken- neth Clarke, could never have dared to mount Gordon Brown's spectacular assault on pensioners' incomes in last month's budget. Had Lord Simon, the former chair- man of BP, been a Tory minister, he would have been forced to resign by now.

None of this is necessarily a bad thing. Politics is a dirty business, but not as dirty as all that. Politicians may be depraved and corrupt, but they are also driven by high ideals and the desire to serve others. It is Mr Blair's great good fortune that Britain has entered a blissful and cynicism-free period of political reporting. Suddenly, the best rather than the worst is assumed of government ministers. Whatever the Tories did, even if it was good, was automatically bad. Whatever Labour does, however arro- gant, incompetent and sleazy, is automati- cally assumed to be inspired by the highest motives.

This is not a state of affairs that can last forever, as Tony Blair must be well aware. When it ends, and Mr Blair's honeymoon may yet have a long time to run, it could all turn very nasty indeed. For the government has its problems. The sky may be clear blue at present. But a cloud is forming on the horizon.

Those around Tony Blair are candid about one thing. They lack a clear message for government. When they were in opposi- tion, the machinery was driven by a single ambition: winning the general election. One objective followed another: Clause 4, party reform, winning battles with the unions at conference. They were all means towards the same end. It is not like that now. Tony Blair defined, quite brilliantly, what Labour was all about in opposition. He has yet to do the same from Downing Street. Tor the last four years, we have had a definite goal,' declared one Cabinet min- ister. 'Now there is a certain lack of pur- pose, no clear objective in sight.' This is why contradictory messages abound. Within weeks of taking office, the Heritage Secretary, Chris Smith, launched a vicious attack on the Camelot 'fat cats' for making too much money out of the National Lottery. Shortly afterwards, his colleague Peter Mandelson defended the decision to pay a far greater sum to Mark McCormack of IMG to raise money for the Millennium Project on the grounds that he was paying the market price.

The Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, unveiled a new 'ethical' foreign policy, shortly before the Defence Secretary, George Robertson, gaily announced that Britain was to sell Hawk jets to the military regime in Indonesia. The Prime Minister announced that 'education, education and education' are the top three objectives of his Labour government. Then the Educa- tion Secretary, David Blunkett, introduced charges for university tuition. Finally, Chancellor Gordon Brown ended tax relief for pension funds, making a nonsense of the Social Security Minister Frank Field's plans to reform the pension system.

This week the Prime Minister will launch a new campaign against drug abuse. But he apparently sees no problem in inviting Britain's most notorious drug abuser, the Oasis songwriter Noel Gallagher, to join a celebrity end-of-term junket in No. 10 Downing Street the previous night.

This lack of clarity — surprising from New Labour, which has made a virtue of its grip and focus — does not matter today. But it will start to count when normal ser- vice returns and government becomes a murky and difficult business once again.

Tony Blair is unlikely to have been great- ly alarmed by last weekend's muttering from former ministers of the Wilson era such as Tony Benn and Roy Hattersley. This was always going to happen. But inter- nal party troubles allied to external difficul- ty would be a different matter. New Labour's greatest misfortune is that it inherited a booming economy from the Tories. Only twice since the second world war have Labour governments been swept in by a giant majority — under Attlee in 1945 and under Wilson in 1966. Both gov- ernments looked, for a moment, unassail- able. But both were broken by economic devaluation. That is why the Chancellor went to such great lengths to woo the City and arm himself against charges of eco- nomic mismanagement. It is why he made the Bank of England independent within days of winning power. It is why he com- mitted the government to keeping Tory spending targets. It is partly why he promised not to raise taxes.

Virtue has had its reward. But the ram- pant strength of sterling — it has risen more than 10 per cent since the general election — may ultimately be damaging.

Some economists think that the present series of interest rate rises are not high enough to curb consumption, and that in due course the government's problem will be steadily rising inflation rather than a steadily rising pound. Most economists at the moment, however, are warning that the interest rate rises will slow down economic growth, causing a recession, or something close to it.

If that happens, once a few factories go bust in marginal constituencies and unem- ployment starts to rise, New Labour's met- tle will really be tested as will Cabinet harmony. Robin Cook, for example, is happy at the Foreign Office, but he would be happier still at the Treasury. The real battles of this glittering Tony Blair adminis- tration have yet to be fought. It would be a cruel trick of history if sterling strength, not sterling weakness as so often before, ended Labour's honeymoon once and for all.

The author is the political co..lumnist of the Express