Anthony Painter

The gossipy bits along with the major controversies from ‘A Journey’ have received far and away the most attention this week. But there are forward-looking aspects to the book also which warrant some (considerable) comment. These are scattered throughout but Tony Blair lays out his ideological and policy prescription for, well, the world in the book’s postscript. I was asked by Martin Stanford on Sky News the other night whether Labour would take these prescriptions on board. My answer was that it wouldn’t immediately would ultimately would have to even though by no means should his ideas be taken as gospel.

Let’s get the less interesting part of the discussion out of the way first. Tony Blair asserts that a New Labour agenda- keeping direct taxes down, being more aggressive about closing the deficit, major public service reform, and maintaining a liberal interventionist foreign policy- would have won Labour the 2010 election. I wouldn’t go that far but I certainly think that it would have won more seats than the party actually won for two reasons. Firstly, that would have been a clear agenda. Labour’s election pitch was, frankly, all over the place. The New Labour approach would have recognisable, distinct and would have nudged Cameron off the centre-ground as he struggled to be heard. Secondly, the Labour renewal debate seems to be determined to ignore a central fact- while Labour did lose working class voters more than the middle and professional classes, it lost them, in part, because they had lost faith in the the state and Labour’s governance of it. I wrote about this last week and Peter Kellner touches on the same point. A purist New Labour agenda would have appealed to these voters (and ps he is the only Labour leader to win an election in my lifetime.)

So I suspect on this one that Tony Blair is mostly right when looked at from the perspective of political positioning (leadership, incumbency, party strength, record etc also need to be taken into account!) For me, this is the least interesting of the debates that the book has provoked. Just because a set of positions give you greater electoral strength, it doesn’t make those positions right necessarily. And one of the arguments above makes the point about clarity. Other positions have clarity too and are mainstream- there are alternative strategies and positions that can build a coalitions. One of New Labour’s errors is to suppose that there is one path to electoral success. There are in fact many. Physics created this universe but there are many other universes with different rules (doffs cap to Stephen Hawking.)

The New Labour 2010 agenda as outlined in ‘A Journey’ – which is essentially a liberal agenda which is why it chimes with the Coalition to such a degree- has four elements: liberal, global markets; liberal interventionist foreign policy; public service reform, and engagement with emerging economies and powers. I’ll leave the last one out as it’s basically motherhood and apple pie (though Tony Blair does have some important reflections on the EU all of which I agree with.) I’ll take the others in turn.

1) Liberal, global markets

Many people will tempted to stop reading Blair’s account of the credit crunch when he asserts that, “‘the market’ did not fail. One part of one sector did.” I’ll not waste much time on that other than to say that these markets seem to have a habit of popping in many and varied ways- housing boom and busts, stock market exuberance, banking system failures, hedge fund crashes, asset bubbles bursting, etc- and in many places. So we need to be a bit more watchful about the nature of market forces than Tony Blair implies.

It is worth reading on beyond that point though. He argues for an increase in VAT and a more aggressive response to cutting the budget as soon as possible on the basis that a high and continuing deficit will impact confidence. Martin Woolf takes on this argument this morning in a column praising Ed Balls’ Bloomberg economy speech last Friday. Actually, on this one Tony Blair has a point. The wolves are not at the door but that does not mean that they will not be and being caught with a large deficit without a serious reduction plan in that process is disastrous. This is not just about funding the deficit, it is about confidence in the UK economy as a whole. Deficit reduction is not the be all and end all- and done the wrong way is economically and socially damaging as the Coalition will in all probability find out- but it is not something to be blasé about either.

There is a deeper and in some ways more important point also. Blair’s economic approach is the right one for those who have market power and are able to compete in the global economy. There is little in it to consider the destinies of those who are less advantaged. New Labour’s prescription was to run with the global market then redistribute its rewards. That’s not good enough. Opportunity, worth, and security need to be redistributed beyond that and what public policy mechanisms can be used to spread opportunity and raise the life outcomes of all. The New Labour prescription stopped short in this regard and, as consequence, found itself minimising the consequences of equality rather than tackling it at source. Quite apart from the individual and social consequences of this which are severe, there are economic consequences- more unequal societies suffer from high debt, insecurity, and demand deficiencies. This needs to be acknowledged as part of a credible economic growth policy going forward.

2) Public service reform.

Here Tony Blair is on much stronger ground. Strangely, he completely undersells his argument and even neuters it to a certain extent by turning it into a discussion about efficiency and the involvement of the private sector in public services.

It is actually more profound than that. It is about a complete readjustment of the relationship of the individual with the state where a much greater space for individual empowerment and civic action is created. Essentially, it is about humanising the state by making it a series of local relationships that insist upon responsiveness. It is easy to see why he found the sell difficult- he never found a way of popularising the mission. David Cameron is trying to achieve that through the ‘big society’ and is struggling- not least because the context is severe cost-cutting.

The craziest thing about public service reform is that it became a threatening rather empowering thing to many of the public sector professionals who could make it work. This is because it was too often more centralising than decentralising. The Coalition is going for a very different approach- one I suspect that Tony Blair wishes he had pursued. Labour will need to engage energetically and constructively with this if it is to respond to what is a desire to see a different and more personal type of state- one that responds to both individuals and civil society.

3) A liberal, interventionist foreign policy

It is to Tony Blair’s credit that he refuses to duck responsibility for the Iraq War. But there is one downside to this that I hope he will find a way of resolving. That is we are denied his full and frank reflections on how we should approach an Iraq-like situation in the future again. As Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War has argued:

“We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why.”

Perhaps a Blair penned equivalent to McNamara’s In Retrospect could be a worthwhile project for him in the future. Liberal interventionism has to be distinguished from neo-conservatism. There are liberal interventionists who were for and some who were against the Iraq invasion. The problem at the moment is that there are times- Sierra Leone, Kosovo, and even Afghanistan- where it is right to intervene because we need to protect our own security or we can, with proper analysis, international support and a credible exit strategy, alleviate suffering. Those arguments are currently difficult to make anywhere but in the US as liberal interventionism which relies on smart power has become fused with neo-conservatism which relies on hard power in the general mindset.

So that’s it- a reflection on Blair’s postscript. Two final things. I agree with every word Tony Blair says about the pitfalls of oppositionalism- you get short term cheers but saddle yourself to unsustainable positions in the long term.

And I profoundly disagree with those who argue that it is time to ‘move on.’ The issues that Tony Blair confronts in this book – extremism, economic collapse, the nature of the state – are still pressing challenges. His perspective is important and has significant merit – it shouldn’t be accepted wholesale but most definitely should not be dismissed. Unfortunately, the serious aspects of this book have been dismissed all too readily. If you read just one thing, read the postscript and take it seriously – David Cameron and Nick Clegg are. And they will in the US and elsewhere. These issues will not go away. We all will have to take his perspective seriously eventually so best start now.