TONY THE TORY FILES:

The Tories should support Tony Blair’s magnificent defiance of his own party (Peter Oborne, 12/06/03, The Spectator)

The intelligent case for voting for Tony Blair in 1997 and 2001 was simple and very compelling. Only New Labour could bring about deep-seated reform of British public services. The argument went as follows: the Tories would never be trusted to tamper with the NHS or the social security system. Their motives were suspect. The voters were easily convinced that their real agenda was privatisation. Just as Richard Nixon, a Republican president, was the only political leader who could restore relations with communist China, so Labour’s Tony Blair was the only man who could take on the public-sector workers.

All the brightest and best people around the Prime Minister — Geoff Mulgan, Frank Field, David Simon, Andrew Adonis, Peter Mandelson, Roy Jenkins, David Miliband — passionately believed this. So did Tony Blair himself. The bitterest disappointment of the last seven years has been the slow, agonising discovery that this belief was unfounded. The modern Labour party may no longer represent the old industrial working class. It is made up instead of state employees of one kind or another: teachers, council workers, civil servants. With a few heartwarming exceptions, these are churlishly protective of their narrow self-interest, and as sentimentally attached to Spanish practices as any Coventry car-worker in the 1970s. Through the unions, the constituency parties and, to a steadily increasing extent, Labour MPs, public-sector workers represent a formidable power bloc for any ambitious politician on the make, and are eager to do damage to the Prime Minister. [...]

[T]here is something admirable, splendid, even magnificent about the Prime Minister’s determination to press this flagship measure through in defiance of his own party. The Higher Education Bill, as currently structured, fits precisely with the original, thrilling philosophy of radical reform which made New Labour such an attractive proposition seven years ago. The Prime Minister will earn great credit, and find his domestic position hugely strengthened, if he has the courage to go with it. The Tory position is contemptible: Michael Howard is wrong to lead the Tories against a measure which fits so comfortably with the overwhelming Conservative belief in freedom for our great public institutions. Sordid party advantage is his only motive, and he should be above that.

The deep battle over tuition fees, however, is between Blair and his own party. On Tuesday the Chancellor made an interesting speech in which he expressed guarded general support for the measure. The background to this latest intervention is still mysterious. There is well-informed talk in Whitehall that things have recently got easier between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. If true, it is a development of the keenest importance with consequences that go far beyond the argument over university education. But the Chancellor remained tellingly silent on variable fees. If Tony Blair gives way on that vital issue of principle in order to secure the passage of the legislation, he will have on his hands a fiasco as shameful as foundation hospitals — a fine idea killed by the Labour party. If the Prime Minister gives way, he might as well give up. If he wins, he will have done something to redeem his premiership.

Mr. Blair, we might say, faces a choice of being Bill Clinton or George W. Bush.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 8, 2003 1:54 PM