FOURTH WAY?:

Judgment Day: The end for Blair?: He took on his party and tamed it, he took on the Tories and trounced them twice, but then he ‘liberated’ Iraq and now the Prime Minister, so wrapped up in his image as a winner, could lose it all over tuition fees and the Hutton report. (James Cusick, 25 January 2004, Sunday Herald)

In July 1994, just after winning the leadership of the Labour Party following the death of John Smith, Blair uttered seven words in his acceptance speech that MPs should have written down, underlined, memorised or even had tattooed as a warning for what was to come. “I will tell you how it works …” he said. He was speaking about his definition of socialism, but in the nine years since – perhaps culminating in the vote on Tuesday and the verdict of Lord Hutton the following day – telling his party “how it works” has become Blair’s confrontational trademark.

Tony Blair is the nemesis of old Labour and the creational saviour of New Labour. The result? According to one disgruntled backbencher, who will be happily voting against the government on Tuesday, “Blair has simply ripped up the very idea, not just of Labour, but of what a party can be. He’s rewritten the notion that a party is an organised group of people who share the same policies, the same general ideology, share a common purpose. Blair’s idea of party – from the start – was a party to back his ideas. And that, maybe, is about to end”.

Blair – also from the start – called his leadership of the Labour Party “a mission of national renewal, hope, change and opportunity”. For the ill-prepared in Labour ranks, his leadership has been a roller coaster of change that has seen the party reinvent itself, redefine itself, and now midway through a second term, re-examine its commitment to Blair’s vision. What some rebels remain unsure of is that if they derail this latest element of Blair’s vision does that mean Blair will simply refuse to take on further challenges and walk away?

For the Blair Party to revert to Labour would be disastrous for Britain, but offers the Tories a golden opportunity to assume the mantle of Blairism.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 25, 2004 9:56 AM