The Blair we voted for

Blair's memoirs - like its author - divide opinion

AN EARLY passage of Tony Blair’s memoirs describes the tastes of some of his constituents; people who enjoy both foreign dishes and traditional British fare, who drink both beer and wine.  It is an unsubtle metaphor for a socially complex modern Britain, yet when assessing the character of Blair himself many appear unwilling to countenance even such superficial qualification. Such is the former prime minister’s polarising effect that his decision to donate all earnings from his memoirs – perhaps a quarter of his total wealth – to the Royal British Legion was variously described as a cynical act of appeasement, or a forlorn attempt to salve his conscience. The notion that the former Prime Minister might continue to stand by his decisions to go to war, especially in Iraq, yet be capable also of regretting the human toll such decisions entailed appears too nuanced.

The media – but often also the public and his party’s – failure to appreciate the complexity of government is a persistent grievance of this book, and the now infamous “feral beast” critique of 2007 comes across load and clear. Yet Blair’s vision, first for modernising his party, then for overhauling his country, could ironically scarcely be clearer. As the account flits back and forth somewhat chaotically between domestic and foreign policy, the frustration of this vision emerges. Without Iraq the principle critique of Tony Blair’s premiership would undoubtedly be that of a squandered mandate for radical and irreversible domestic reform.  A Journey provides much grist to this mill, revealing as early as 2001 Blair’s well-developed anxieties that he would not get done much that he set out to do.

Of course, Blair is abundantly clear that the roadblock to reform was somewhat more substantial than an intransigent media and an uncomprehending party and public.  Gordon Brown is said to be hard at work on a book about the financial crisis of 2008. He would be well-advised to add at least a couple of chapters giving his own account of the Blair years, if only for sense of balance. Following Peter Mandelson’s early summer revelations, the former chancellor is again depicted as sullen, dogged, emotionally stunted and – much more so in Blair’s version than Mandy’s – devoid of an alternative vision of his own. The juicier epithets directed at Brown by Blair are well reported, and render somewhat moderate the “psychological flaws” slur ascribed to Alistair Campbell. Even the lengths to which Blair goes to praise his chancellor’s formidable intellect and “ballast” appear backhanded alongside such criticism. We can be certain that, if not via Brown himself, the other side of this internecine struggle will be told. How much of an appetite for hearing it is open to question now that the man at the very top has had his say.

For all that, however, Blair clearly does not regard his premiership as squandered, nor should he. Had Iraq not happened, much more of this book would have been dedicated to an account and a defence of his domestic legacy, and its underpinning philosophy. As it is, the central and most important parts of A Journey are those chapters dealing with the build up, prosecution and aftermath of the toppling of Saddam. Blair himself notes that both sides of this great schism in British politics have long since stopped listening to the opposing arguments and, to that end, there is little point in appraising anew what is now a familiar and hotly contested defence of his actions. Nevertheless it is hard for anyone but the most closed-minded to read Blair’s words and still believe him to be a callous warmonger or unthinking Bush poodle. The decisions played heavily, the judgements were finely balanced.

The chatty style of Blair’s writing has been well commented upon, and while this must be the first set of British political memoirs in which the verb “dissed” regularly appears, it at least wraps up one minor point of debate. For more than a decade we wondered how manufactured those dropped glottal stops were. With no further electoral or popular gain to derive, Blair’s written equivalent of his estuarial tongue points to sincerity here.

This is not to say he does not acknowledge political calculation on his own part. He declares himself manipulative and owns up to telling lies, albeit for the greater good of securing peace in Northern Ireland. Nor is this Blair the humble servant of the people. He sugars few pills in his accounts of a host of former colleagues; even allies like John Hutton are damned with the faint praise of being “comfortable with the level of ambition he had”. Those who believe Blair acted as president rather than prime minister can take succour in the all-too-sparing references to Cabinet discussions. He does not dress up his ego, drive or impatience with lesser mortals. For a person who cites the importance of his faith Blair hardly comes over as a man who answers to a higher authority.

But the frailties are exposed as well. He admits to being scared by the burden of high office. He is often candid about his own mistakes, though by and large these are tactical rather than strategic. He admits to drinking too much and being kept awake at night by the gravity of his actions. And he declares his admiration for certain Conservative traits. Those ever-vigilant sentinels of the “snub to Wales” can also take heart; an early reaction to Diana’s death is whether to call a halt to the Scottish referendum campaign, while the closing section deals with surmounting the Scottish elections of 2007. Welsh devolution is hardly mentioned even in passing, and Blair’s abiding intervention in Welsh politics – the Alun Michael “stitch-up” – is not at all.

In the aftermath of the book’s publications the BBC’s Nick Robinson pompously claimed vindication in his and other journalists’ decade-long pursuit of “TB/GB” stories – proof of the struggle for control of the government in the face of denials and dismissals. It is ironic, but also apt, that even confirmation by Blair of those tensions should itself become a process story about new Labour’s media manipulation. There is much else in this book to divert students of the era and of the phenomenon that is and was New Labour. But Blair is wrong to suggest people have largely stopped listening over just Iraq, for most have made their minds up one way or another about his entire premiership.

Though there is much interpretation that is keenly disputed A Journey is, fundamentally, an honest – or at least a consistent – book. The Blair we see within its pages is very largely the same Blair we were presented with while in office. The instincts and approach he described of himself as prime minister are those he describes here. The characteristics upon which he stood – and repeatedly won – were, it seems those of the real Tony Blair. Today, he is described as many things, not the least of which is a war criminal, but the charge that so often attaches to Labour leaders, that of traitor, is not his.

This book helps to explain why. For better or worse, we got the Blair we voted for; not a closet Tory, but neither a recognisably Labour politician. For all the caricatures of Blair the actor, for all the claims of spin and of outright deception, the reforming vision that he set out as Prime Minister is the one in which he believed and attempted to see through. So perhaps there is another irony in that a prime minister apparently destined to go down in history as more mendacious than most should emerge as perhaps more consistent than many once distance has been placed from high office.

A Journey by Tony Blair is published by Hutchinson