POLITICS
The onanists, the stripper and the manic totalitarian
BRUCE ANDERSON
Tony Blair once had an unscripted meeting with some journalists and old Labour supporters. It took place in Scot- land, and the PM did not enjoy himself. Afterwards, he described his interrogators as 'unreconstructed wankers': a rare glimpse of Mr Blair's real thoughts, behind the smiles and the spin.
One might have expected that the 100th anniversary of the Labour party would pro- voke some further real thought, albeit in more polished language. Not so; a reading of the mechanical, insincere prose with which Mr Blair chose to commemorate the event leads to only one conclusion. Mr Blair has no interest in the history of the Labour party. He could hardly avoid mak- ing a speech, but such perfunctory history as it contained was dragooned into the ser- vice of hagiography: his own hagiography. In 1900, we gather, a group of proto- Blairites defied the forces of conservatism and established the Labour party. Fast for- ward the next 94 years, when proto- Blairism was less in evidence and there was a lot of unreconstructed electoral onanism. Then history became apotheosis.
Mr Blair's critics often accuse him of being a manic totalitarian. Both charges are overstated; neither is devoid of psychologi- cal insight. The mania comes from the pres- sures of constant electioneering. General election campaigns are stressful affairs, but once they are over, most prime ministers relax into the process of running the coun- try, which may be more intellectually demanding but involves much less nervous strain. Not Mr Blair: he is much more inter- ested in electioneering than in governing. He started fighting the 1997 election in 1994; he is still doing so. He certainly intends to fight it again at the next election. He will try to continue doing so for the rest of his premiership. There is one admirable aspect to this: Tony Blair is one of only about ten people in the country who do not regard the next election result as a fore- gone conclusion. But that is only part of the story. This is a man who cannot bear oppo- sition, from any quarter — hence the charge of totalitarianism.
`Come on,' one can hear the Blairites protesting. 'Before you accuse our boy of totalitarianism, think back to Maggie. She wasn't exactly the most tolerant prime min- ister we've ever had — so why blame Tony?' But there is a crucial distinction between Margaret Thatcher's brand of intolerance and Tony Blair's. She was a Manichaean. She relished combat and enjoyed defeating her enemies, but she never expected to run out of enemies. If she had done, she would have been horribly bored. Mrs Thatcher was a relentless polariser of political debate, but she never tried to abolish polarity.
A poor debater, Mr Blair does not enjoy combat and takes all opposition as a per- sonal affront. He is happy to try to incorpo- rate his opponents within his ever-expand- ing tent, but if they refuse to come under the canvas, he reacts with petulance and spite. This is the totalitarian aspect; Mr Blair would like the rest of us to believe that all views except his own are illegitimate and that all his opponents can be lumped under one heading: 'the forces of conser- vatism'. As this applies to Ken Livingstone as well as to William Hague, it does not seem a useful or even coherent category. It has about as much relation to reality as did the charge sheets at a Stalin-era show trial. But it tells us a lot about Tony Blair.
Apropos of Ken Livingstone, by Tuesday morning he had still not made up his mind whether to run: an indecision which was becoming tedious. Mr Livingstone was beginning to resemble a stripper who is reaching for her knickers for the 14th time, not realising that her audience is rapidly los- ing interest in their contents. Long before Tuesday, it should have been clear to Ken Livingstone — it was to everyone else that he had left himself no choice. If he did not run, no one would ever take him seri- ously again. For over the last few weeks, with the prospect of a Livingstone candida- ture, the years of marginality had slipped away. Suddenly, once again, this Bolshevik version of Gussie Fink-Nottle was actually passing muster as a front-rank politician.
It is easy to forget how seriously Ken Liv- ingstone was taken — and how much he was hated — back in the mid-Eighties, when Tony Blair was still a CND supporter barely out of short trousers. I remember a conversation then with Robin Cook; we agreed that Ken would succeed Tony Benn as the leader of the Left. (Mr Cook himself had no designs on that role. He was already trying to make his peace with electability.) Like many a youthful politician before him, Ken had been lucky in his patrons: in his case, Patrick Jenkin.
The then Tory environment secretary had many qualities. Alas for Mr Jenkin, they did not include nimble-footedness. Ken regular- ly out-manoeuvred him; poor Patrick looked like a dinosaur whose backside had been on fire 20 minutes but the smoke had still not reached his nostrils. Mrs Thatcher did notice. Mr Jenkin was sacked. His successor was Kenneth Baker, and as soon as that feline figure took over, everything changed. Suddenly, Livingstone ceased to be the inter- locuteur valable of Cabinet ministers. Ken Baker had put him back in his box.
But Mr Livingstone's antics had also earned him the undying hostility of large sections of his own party. After all, he had not even managed to save the GLC; many Libour MPs wished only that he had been buried under the rubble. The antagonism towards him was especially powerful in Scotland, which illustrated the cultural dif- ference between the Scottish Labour party and the then London one. In Scotland, the Left was Stalinist, not Trotskyite. A lot of Ken's parliamentary colleagues held him personally responsible for Labour's failure to win the 1987 election, That was an exag- gerated assessment. For a start, it was unfair to Neil Kinnock. But it does explain why Ken found that large numbers of Labour MPs were queuing up, to shake him warmly by the throat.
Since then, Ken has had 12 years of chat- shows, restaurant columns, and increasing political irrelevance. He was turning into a mere unreconstructed newt-fancier. But the throat-squeezing queues are now reassem- bling, and the Tory party is enjoying the spectacle. That is foolish of them. It is true that Mr Blair is angry and embarrassed; the Tories should not be deluded by his reac- tion. If by polling day it still appeared that the only choice facing the electorate of Lon- don was the one between Ken Livingstone and Frank Dobson, it would not be clear why Mr Blair should suffer. The Tories would have been banished to the periphery.
That need not happen. Steve Norris is not only energetic and versatile; he is the only major candidate who is a remotely plausible mayor. He should have all the evidence he needs to persuade enough Londoners that the choice between Messrs Dobson and Liv- ingstone is a choice between a dunderhead and a jackanapes, and that it would be a poor look-out for London if either of them were elected. It would also be a poor look- out for the Tories.
Previous page
