JUST LIKE BILL?

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With the red-rose symbol of new Labour behind him, Blair responded, "If a majority wants to be in a union, they should be allowed to do so, just like in the United States. Even Ronald Reagan was for majority rule. He spoke of workers having a choice, and no one ever suggested that Ronald Reagan was a pig. Ronald Reagan was against the closed shop, as am I."

Within a day, the charge that seemed so threatening had evaporated. "He's very good, isn't he?" mumbled Thatcher admiringly. "He certainly knows damage control."

No one doubts that Blair is clever. Like centrist politicians everywhere, he's adept at embracing prevailing sentiments. By definition, though, the pursuit of centrism often involves following rather than leading. The question then is whether such centrists actually believe what they say and whether their actions in office will conform to their rhetoric. One always wonders whether they're tough enough to arbitrate among competing concerns and constituencies. Often the test comes when the only clean way out of a tangle demands saying no to those who will be offended by a particular decision. Whether Blair passes this test remains to be seen. Certainly, the foreign politician he most admires, Bill Clinton, has failed it on innumerable occasions.

As for his immediate task--getting elected--Blair has proved conclusively that he knows exactly what's worked for Margaret Thatcher and John Major. He has singlemindedly refashioned Labour to contest for the leadership of modern Britain, and done so largely by grafting the most popular and successful Tory program planks onto Labour's manifesto, which means Labour is fairly seen as a Tory clone. Thatcher's success, especially, made reforming Labour both necessary and possible, and she regularly complains about a "conversion of convenience" while insisting that "imitations are still fake." Newspapers like the Independent rail about new Labour's "miserable, defensive me-tooism."

Blair is unapologetic. "It is not a sin to want to be elected," he says. "Unless you're elected, you can't do a damn thing for anybody." Those who seek office, he knows, aren't shy about accommodating reality, and the realities have changed rapidly in Britain. Large chunks of the old working class have advanced into the middle class. Union membership, the bedrock Labour constituency, has dropped from 53% in 1980 to 32% in 1994. Many voters who once cast their ballots for Labour on the basis of a tribal instinct to support their similarly situated comrades floated to the Conservatives in the 1980s. But like Clinton, who wooed back the Reagan Democrats, Blair is leading because he is recapturing those Labour voters who strayed to the Tories as their wallets thickened. It is hardly surprising, then, to hear Blair say that he is not "about to press the rewind button and return to the 1970s" or that he believes "Margaret Thatcher's emphasis on free enterprise was right."

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