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Tony Blair's big idea

6 October 2003

Tony Blair's big speech lacked purposeful ideas about where to take his government. For Labour, he seemed to say, the best it can hope to do is keep the Tories at bay.

Tony Blair's speech to the Labour Party Conference last week was strong on rhetoric and stage-managed to dramatic effect, as the ovations proved. It was, nonetheless, the speech of a man under pressure and, because of this, it revealed slightly more of what drives him and his agenda than he may have intended.

It comes towards the end, in the foothills leading to the summit of his messianic peroration. Talking about the domestic challenges the government faces he asks himself, rhetorically, why he sticks at it. The answer, he tells us, is "...because I know what's there if we stumble ... what's round the corner is the old Tory days... When we get to the next election, believe me, we won't be fighting for votes with the hard left. We'll be fighting the hard right. The Tories. And they'll fight us on immigration, on Europe and above all on tax."

These are words that shed light on much that precedes them in this speech. On financing higher education : "To pretend it will all come from the taxpayer is dishonest. It won't and it wouldn't be fair if it did."

On criminal justice: "... in Britain in the 21st century it is not the innocent being convicted. It's too many of the guilty going free."

On asylum: "We should cut back the ludicrously complicated appeal process, de-rail the gravy train of legal aid, fast-track those from democratic countries, and remove those who fail in their claims without further judicial interference."

This is strong stuff, addressed directly at the Tory agenda. It harks back to references earlier in the speech to the origins of New Labour, conceived as an answer to the "ritual" of former Labour governments tearing themselves to pieces and crashing to electoral defeat. "For too many of our 100 years," he says, "we have been a well-intentioned pressure group. We fight injustice. We argue our causes. But our psychology has been that of people who know, deep down, someone else is the governing party and we are the ones championing the grievance."

So there it is, plain to see. The scars of perpetual opposition are still deeply etched on Tony Blair's political hide and he is determined to do nothing that would risk his government's grip on power. That nothing includes much of the radical, reforming constitutional agenda that his government was originally elected to enact. In includes anything that would involve sharing power - with the trades unions, with the house of commons, with a reformed house of lords, with an enlarged European Union or even with the Liberal Democrats as a result of proportional representation - but, not, strangely, with a right wing U.S. administration - a Tory-friendly alliance that may, ironically, be the thing to bring about the very outcome that Mr Blair most fears.

Leaving aside the tax, benefits and spending decisions that have come largely from the semi-independent Treasury of Gordon Brown, the list of things that Tony Blair is determined not to do actually includes most things, which is why a minor issue like foundation hospitals has come to dominate his policy-making agenda.

Minor? Well, it would have been minor if it hadn't been given a grand name and touted as a ground-breaking reform. But the reason why nobody really knows what this policy is all about is that the answer is not much. At one point borrowing powers were at the heart of it, but since being eviscerated by the Treasury the measure now amounts to a notional transfer of ownership and accountability from Whitehall to the local community. According to the government these new trusts will be "part of the NHS, and subject to NHS systems of inspection. They will treat NHS patients according to NHS principles and NHS standards, but they will be controlled and run locally, not nationally." Sounds nice, doesn't it, but it's hardly radical, particularly when you consider that those NHS principles, standards and systems of inspection are all centrally controlled.

What upset people was the two tier approach - the idea that the new, shiny trusts would prosper and the old ones would be left to rot. It was an idea that flowed directly from the way in which the policy was presented - in particular that fancy name, clearly intended to create a sense of innovation and renewal in which not everybody could share. It was like saying that in future there would be "good" hospitals and other hospitals. Indeed, it was so like that, it can only have been done on purpose. The government took a minor and technical policy initiative and blew it up into a major plank of its "reformist" agenda.

If the policy was deliberately intended to appear counter-intuitive to its Labour roots, the government must be well pleased with the snarling reaction it brought forth. Opposing his own left wing has become a key part of the prime minister's electoral appeal. Unfortunately for him, the headline issues over which he has staked out this position in recent months - foundation hospitals, university tuition fees and Iraq - have not played well for him. Nobody has a clue about foundation hospitals, but they don't seem to like them; the middle classes are decidedly nervous about tuition fees; and on Iraq he was... well... plain wrong.

So where are the policies that will really define the prime minister in the run up to the election in two year's time? He will keep the conservative mood-music playing on criminal justice and asylum. The prison population will go on rising (but that will happen anyway); asylum-seekers and refugees will go on having a hard time of it (but they always did); the key economic, tax and benefit decisions will go on being taken in the Treasury, where the prime minister's voice holds little sway.

The only policy statement in the speech was not new, and scarcely ground-breaking - the abolition of the remaining handful of hereditary peers, a large chunk of whom are bound to be made up as lifers. Meanwhile the sort of second chamber reform that could really make a difference will be avoided in the interests of retaining the executive grip on the political controls.

Apart from that, it was fighting fanaticism with reason; keeping the option of joining the Euro; renewal, not retreat; and choice for all in health and education. And, as if to emphasise the emptiness of Number 10's policy cupboard, "the biggest policy consultation ever to have taken place in this country... A progressive, imaginative, vibrant public debate about how we together build a future fair for all."

It was trumpeted as a Damascene conversion, a rejection of top-down policy-making in favour of consultation and collective endeavour. It sounded good to the party faithful, although whether their views will be deemed acceptable is less certain. What is alarming, however, is the tacit acknowledgement from the prime minister that those top-down policies - on international security, on education, on health, on transport, on pensions, on criminal justice, on asylum and international development - haven't worked in the way that he thought they would. And that he really hasn't a clue what to put in their place.