Blair Confronts the Power of the Chattering Classes

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has had a really terrible few weeks.

First, an old nemesis became London’s first elected mayor; Blair’s candidate ran third in a four-person field. The opposition Conservative Party did far better than expected in nationwide elections for local councils and has trimmed Blair’s once unassailable lead in the polls to single digits. In one recent poll, 44% of voters were satisfied with the prime minister’s performance--but 43% were not.

Meanwhile, English thugs, following the national soccer team in the recent European championship, behaved as they usually do, laying waste to blameless towns in Belgium and Holland, and Blair was forced to apologize. Last Sunday, in a much-read column, Labor supporter and thriller novelist Ken Follett slammed the practice of anonymous leaks by which, supposedly, Blair’s allies do down their rivals. “Slowly but relentlessly,” wrote Follett, “Tony Blair’s shortcomings are undermining him.” To cap it all, Blair’s 16-year-old son was arrested last week for being drunk and incapable in London’s Leicester Square, particularly unfortunate timing, given that Blair had just proposed on-the-spot fines for drunken louts.

All this has taken a toll. The denizens of London’s media and political village--the famous chattering classes--have turned on the prime minister with a vengeance.

For the first time since his win in 1997, moreover, criticism of the prime minister (and his policies) is beginning to leak into the U.S. media, which have long treated him with reverence, as if he were President Bill Clinton without the naughty bits. In a Newsweek column last week, George Will said Blair’s government was “preoccupied with the politics of presentation” and epitomized “the radicalism of purposeful inertness.” Much to Britons’ annoyance, a recent segment on CBS News claimed that Britain is, in some ways, a more violent and crime-ridden society than the United States (old news to those of us who visit London regularly, but, hey, better late than never).

What’s going on? In one view, not much. Labor’s margin over the Conservatives in the House of Commons is so huge that Blair’s personal popularity would have to collapse for him to lose the next election, expected in spring 2001. In large measure, his current woes are no more than a return to politics as usual here, and an end to the three-year grace period in which he has utterly dominated the scene.

Still, something is amiss. To an extent, Will is right; Blair’s government is obsessed with presentation. He and his acolytes have taken spin--that most American of the political black arts--and adopted it with the zeal of college students downloading from Napster. But there’s more to the current discontent with Blair than a reasonable distaste for the way his people constantly attempt to manipulate the news. If polls and conversations in London are any guide, significant numbers of Britons seem to have decided that they may admire Blair--but don’t like him. (They had much the same attitude toward Margaret Thatcher.) The compassion the public may be feeling for Blair after his son’s arrest is just a blip on the radar.

It seems an extraordinary proportion of the chattering classes just can’t stand the man. For British journalists, to whom cynicism comes as easily as the second bottle of wine over lunch, Blair’s earnestness, piety, zeal for his mission to modernize Britain and passion for abstract nouns (community, responsibility, inclusion) stick in the gullet. Blair’s recent speech in Germany, in which he set out “my view on the ethical values that should guide us in the era of globalization” is just the sort of thing his critics loathe. The prime minister, they say, is a phony; he’s a control freak; worst of all, he’s “preachy.” (Thatcher always reserved her moral preaching for visits to the United States; she knew London’s chattering classes, above all else, won’t tolerate being told what’s good for them.)

In normal--heck, sensible--countries, the attitude of a few hundred pundits and their pals would matter little. But Britain is different. Along with soccer and sexual juvenilia, politics is the great British spectator sport. The most competitive daily press in the world and nightly TV shows are the principal means by which politicians get their message out; there is no British tradition of press conferences, fireside chats to the nation or even political advertising.

In large measure, any British politician’s reputation is at the mercy of a few score hacks who pore over every crisis and argument, real or imagined, within the government in search of a story with which to beat the competition. Has there been a mild flu epidemic? Then the government must do something about it. Does a minister in charge of the environment have two cars? Let’s rub such outrageous profligacy in his face. Has another minister said something about the prospect of Britain adopting the euro that is not solidly on-message? Then there must be a fatal split in the Cabinet.

Blair’s government is not perfect; no government is or ever was. Outside the prime minister and Gordon Brown, his finance minister, it is worryingly short of first-class talent. But if Britons could raise their sights above the daily entertainment in the papers, they might conclude that Blair has done three big things right.

First, his government has managed the economy with extraordinary caution and skill; there is no sign of those boom-to-bust cycles that have long plagued Britain. Second, he has maintained amicable relations with both the administration in Washington and Britain’s partners in the European Union, a trick that has eluded every British government since 1945. Third, Blair’s government has introduced the most sweeping changes to Britain’s archaic constitution in 300 years. Complete reform of the House of Lords, regional parliaments for Scotland and Wales, elected mayors for the large cities and the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into British law--this amounts to a comprehensive change designed both to bring government closer to the electorate and make it more accountable.

With a truly absurd lack of perspective, many commentators like to complain that some of the details of those changes seem muddled. So, doubtless, did many aspects of the U.S. Constitution in 1790.

Blair still has much to do. The standard of public services--particularly health and transportation--is woeful. The age-old question of how closely Britain should be bound into developments in continental Europe has not been solved. Yet, whatever people may think of Blair the man, his three big achievements amount to an impressive record. They don’t sell papers or make for good late-night TV; they don’t provoke clever conversation at the chattering class’s boozy dinner parties, of the kind you enjoyed in “Notting Hill.” But they are real, not phony.

For the record, so is Blair. *