OUT OF THE THIRD SHADOW:

Roy Jenkins would have been so proud to hear Tony tell Gordon where to go (Mary Ann Sieghart, March 28, 2003, Times of London)

At Roy Jenkins’s memorial service in Westminster Abbey yesterday, shafts of sunlight streamed over the heads of a congregation containing pretty well every surviving political figure from the second half of the 20th century. Three former prime ministers shared the front pew of the quire. The only notable absentee, the man who was supposed to give the address, was Tony Blair, the adopted political son of Lord Jenkins of Hillhead.

In normal circumstances, the current Prime Minister would not have dreamt of missing such an event. He was fond of Jenkins, and saw him as his mentor, his father figure. It was therefore particularly poignant that a council of war — that most adult of tasks — had drawn Mr Blair to Washington.

For the Prime Minister, in the past few months, has grown up immeasurably. He seems to have undergone the transformation that many men, particularly oldest sons, experience when their father dies. John Mortimer describes the process in Clinging to the Wreckage: “Sudden freedom, growing up, the end of dependence, the step into the sunlight where no one’s taller than you and you’re in no one’s shadow.”

When Mr Blair won power, he seemed like a boy pretending to be a man. He had no experience of even the lowest rung of ministerial office. It didn’t help that the youngest premier for more than a century looked even younger than he was.

As experience has taken the place of innocence, a new Blair has emerged.

Mr. Blair has yet to shed the one disastrous aspect of his mentor's legacy: Mr. Jenkins' dangerous attachment to a unified Europe. If he can do so--and what better impetus could there be for chucking internationalism than the despicable behavior of its institutions in the current crisis?--and if he can fully embrace the meaning behind his Third Way rhetoric, reducing the role of government in peoples' daily lives, then he stands to be one of the truly historical men of British history, a savior in some sense, rebuilding national sovereignty after too many years of transnationalism and rebuilding social capital after too many years of Das Kapital. As Ms Sieghart says, pursuing such visions runs the risk of losing him the support of his own party, but we've long argued that Mr. Blair is destined to achieve such great things--and avoid the dire fate of continental Europe (see below)--only by becoming the leader of the Tories or of a goodly portion thereof in a third party. Hasten the day. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 28, 2003 8:23 AM