TIME EUROPE
June 5, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 22
Baby, It's Cold Outside
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Much rides on Blair himself. His is the most centralized administration in British history. Ten Downing St. controls the agenda and message of government in a way that borrows explicitly from the take-no-prisoners style of Bill Clinton's White House, even planning a new Web-based computer system to make sure that every department and minister can respond instantly and uniformly to problems or critics. Blair himself is really the "brand" of New Labour, his earnest face heavily promoted as the party's message on wallet cards, posters and TV, now personally directing the effort to fix the Health Service. So far his ubiquity has paid off: Hattersley, who criticizes Blair from the left, nevertheless admires the appeal of his intelligence and good-neighborliness. "There's a lot to be said for a politician you'd like to marry your daughter," he says.
But this benign image is decaying a little. Even before baby Leo was keeping him up nights, one longtime colleague thought Blair looked "shattered" — exhausted. Recent speeches have shown touches of exasperation with voters for their impatience and failure to grasp what he's trying to accomplish. At a town meeting in Kilsyth, Scotland, last March, four times he told the audience that "you have to understand" that the government has hard choices and is doing the best it can — as if the disillusion he sensed was their fault. William Hague is trying to rattle Blair at their weekly setpiece battle, Prime Minister's Question Time, so "the public will see the scowl on Blair's face," says a Tory insider.
The government's permanent war footing has prompted ministers to announce "new" programs several times, use dubious accounting to inflate spending on vote getters like education, and to downplay hidden tax increases. When the Prime Minister hand-wrote a 975-word rebuttal to a front-page attack in the mass-circulation tabloid Sun, the paper ran it under the headline "Rattled." Aides admit the letter was a mistake, but the conviction that grim and constant vigilance is the price of survival starts at the very top of 10 Downing St. "This sentiment may derive from a streak of Puritanism in me," Blair said earlier this year, "but I have always believed that progress comes at a price ... If life gets better, it gets harder."
Curiously, Baby Leo is giving his dad a chance to retune his political antennae just when he needs it. Blair decided against paternity leave, but after two days at home with the newborn, he cleared his schedule for two weeks and asked his deputy John Prescott to take over most official duties. Mostly he wants to bond with the baby — and yes, prime ministers do change diapers — but Time has learned that Blair also feels a need to "take stock, stand back and think about what he really wants to accomplish" before the election expected next year, says a senior aide. "It's not a great big rethink, it's not that we're sitting around with graphs and polls." Mostly he will be talking to confidants like Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Peter Mandelson, the Northern Ireland Secretary who may run the next campaign, to figure out how to refocus the government's message, "which has become too cluttered. You can't believe how much time as Prime Minister is taken up with crises, Sierra Leone, Northern Ireland, managing the in-box," says the aide. "This two weeks is a sensible time to take stock."
There's enough good news around that Blair could emerge from his mini-retreat determined to barrel on and trust that voters will stick with him despite his warts. Crucially, Britain's economy is healthy and stable, with growth at 3% and average earnings in January a remarkable 4.8% higher than a year ago. Showing the country that Labour could really be trusted to run the economy has been Blair's overwhelming goal, the key element of his campaign to be the first Labour Prime Minister returned to a full second term, and so far it's worked. Peter Kilfoyle, an early Blair backer who quit his ministerial job in March out of frustration that Blair is ignoring core Labour voters and the industrial north, nevertheless admires his discipline. "He's been extremely slow and cautious, but not necessarily to his detriment. He hasn't been seen to take decisions that have spectacularly blown up." Even with the Tories starting to gain, "Blair's is the only government since polling began in Britain 60 years ago that has never fallen behind the opposition in surveys of voting intentions," says Roger Mortimore, senior political analyst at the opinion firm MORI.
But Labour officials still worry about the 1996 election in Queensland, Australia, where a popular Labour government lost because too many supporters stayed home. Blair's critics in his own party think he could head off this prospect here if he treated them more like colleagues than impediments. "Tony doesn't take criticism well, even constructive criticism," says Kilfoyle, whom no senior figure sought out for a heart-to-heart after he resigned. Tom Sawyer, former Labour general secretary, says more gently that Blair could inspire deeper commitment "if we all ate in the same canteen" instead of his "command style of government."
Just as Newt Gingrich helped Bill Clinton, a more credible Hague will quiet Blair's internal critics. But there's a paradox at the heart of Blair's strategy. He has always been skilled at convincing voters he's on their side, but only now is his government starting to spend at levels that can redeem his vision of a thoroughly modernized Britain. For big institutions like the Health Service, real progress will take years.
In the Britain Blair is helping create, people are more consumerist, demanding, politically volatile, yet his strategy rests on their willingness to delay gratification and accept his word that things will someday get better. "Training a heart doctor takes seven years. These things won't fix overnight," says a senior official. "Promising you will square a circle that is unsquarable has diminishing returns. We have to be quite tough in our message."
In fact, Blair's campaign pledges were carefully drafted to be achievable, but the mood music of his landslide has left expectations of much greater accomplishment. A time-honored way to ease voter discontent would be pork-barrel politics, like boosting the basic pension instead of the additional grants the government thinks are a better way to target the poorest retirees. Forget it, says a Blair aide. "What would be loopy would be to bung the pensioners another five pounds [a week] because we're not winning their votes. It's important people understand that we're not going to throw overboard sensible policies because of some dip in the polls."
So, Britain: Take it or leave it. From modernizing the Labour Party to bombing Kosovo to visiting Putin, Blair has shown he's not afraid to lead, which on balance has been an electoral asset. Now he must lead the electors themselves to eat their vegetables — because it will be better for them in the long run — and to like it enough to re-elect him. It's a good thing that Blair has been reading the Koran lately. It may provide him some comfort when he comes across this verse: "Surely I have rewarded them this day because they were patient..." Will the country be patient enough to let little Leo start school from Downing Street?
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June 5, 2000
COVER
Baby, It's Cold Outside
Tony Blair gave birth to a new Labour Party, but the Prime Minister's promise of a "modern Britain" is going to take much longer to deliver
New Kid on the Block
An open letter to Leo Blair, Britain's youngest celebrity
EUROPE
A Difficult Performance
David Trimble squeezes a close vote from his party to rejoin Northern Ireland's government
All Quiet on the Eastern Front
A decade after the end of the cold war, Germany plans to revamp its army
Guilt by Association
In an apparent postwar payback, a Serbian court jails a group of Kosovo Albanians for "terrorism"
MIDDLE EAST
Courage under Fire
In a defining moment, Prime Minister Ehud Barak makes good on his promise to withdraw Israeli troops from southern Lebanon
The Time Had Come To End a Tragedy
Israel's Prime Minister insists that withdrawing from Lebanon will not harm security, and he warns against a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state
AFRICA
Showdown to Savagery
After Ethiopian forces blitz their way into Eritrea, a bloody two-year war may be closer to its conclusion
Hope Springs Internal
African women may be the key to saving the chaotic continent
BUSINESS
The Money Game
Even as football's cup runneth over, there is a growing sense of unease among fans that riches may ruin their sport
For Love and Money
Why shouldn't a top-level footballer earn as much as an actor does?
Fertile Fields
Movers and takers
Beenz Counters
An upstart firm tries to make its new product the first legal tender of the World Wide Web
The New European Challenge
E.U. firms must grasp the opportunities of an expanding home market
THE ARTS
Dark Victory
At Cannes this year, the jury danced with Björk, but some fine Asian films made a lasting impression
The Art of Science
The eclectic but elegant Musée des arts et métiers reopens in Paris after a decade-long restoration
DEPARTMENTS
Techwatch
World Watch
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