Tony Blair is not exactly the Madonna of British politics, constantly reinventing himself. He may have grown older and greyer, but otherwise he has remained remarkably consistent. As he told the Labour conference in Brighton in south-east England: ”I don’t think as a human being, as a family man, I’ve changed at all.”
Yet last week he presented a different Tony Blair to his party and the wider world, one altered by events and experience. He even announced the shift: ”I have changed as a leader.”
In the heady days of the 1990s, either on the eve of power or in the first blush of it, Blair would come on as a wide-eyed optimist, bursting with self-confidence. This was the era of Britain as a ”beacon to the world”. As one colleague put it, Blair was in his John F Kennedy period.
Last Tuesday that brimming certainty was either gone or artfully concealed. Instead the prime minister displayed an unfamiliar trait: humility. As if bowing his head before the party brethren he so often used to scold, he made a remarkable admission — that he and his decisions on foreign policy were the source of ”the problem of trust” now afflicting the government.
Then he uttered two sentences that must have caused physical pain to his throat: ”The evidence about Saddam having actual biological and chemical weapons, as opposed to the capability to develop them, has turned out to be wrong. I acknowledge that and accept it.”
That brought some unscripted applause, a sense of relief that at last he had said what so many had longed to hear. He didn’t give the full ”sorry”, but the Labour tribe took what they could get.
The key was in the tone of the speech. Blair did not bang the podium, laying down the law. Rather, he sought sympathy. People had seen him ”struggling with” the dilemma of Iraq. It had been ”hard” and he had worked desperately to find a way out. ”There has been no third way this time. Believe me, I looked for it.”
It was all a long way from the dogmatic assertiveness on show last year, when Blair told his troops: ”I’ve not got a reverse gear.” There were no such Thatcheresque declarations. Instead he soliloquised his self-doubt. ”Do I know I’m right? … I’m like any other human being, as fallible and as capable of being wrong.”
He could hardly have gone much further. A full mea culpa, an admission that he had made a historic error in Iraq, would have sounded like a resignation speech. But he could not have done much less either. Anti-war sentiment is sufficiently strong, in Brighton and beyond, that a defiant ”I was right and you’re all wrong” might have turned a mood into a movement.
So Blair probably struck the right tone, somewhere in between. And for that moment, in the hall, it seemed to work. When a lone anti-war protester heckled, he received no backing. Cheers were reserved for Blair’s put-down.
The substance, though, was a different matter. As critics re-read the crucial passages, they may find them less convincing. In elegant fashion, the prime minister repeated the subliminal connection between 9/11 and Iraq — even though no evidence links them. He posed a series of false distinctions, attributing to his critics a view none of them actually hold. He said, for example, that his opponents believed terrorism did not pose a new threat, but rather amounted to a series of acts by individual extremists. These same critics imagined ”the terrorists are in Iraq to liberate it”. This was straw-man politics, knocking down an enemy that does not exist.
Equally, one of his biggest applause lines was his promise — after the United States election — to make the Middle East peace process a personal priority. No one could be against that.
But a moment’s reflection stirred sceptical thoughts. Wasn’t he supposed to have won movement on this from George W Bush already, in return for London’s dogged support on Iraq? Indeed, hadn’t Blair promised ”final status” Palestinian-Israeli talks by Christmas in his conference speech of 2002 — a commitment that led precisely nowhere? In other words, there were some skilful debating moves, but hardly an argument built to last.
Few who have opposed Blair on foreign-policy grounds for nearly two years are likely to have been won over.
The other four-fifths of the speech put him where he has long wanted to be, back on the British domestic agenda. The new humility did the trick in this sphere, too. He was no longer hectoring the Labour party, but setting out a ”mission” for the third term that they could join with enthusiasm. Some found Blair’s packed 10-point programme a tad too detailed, too many policies to take in. But that may have been deliberate. Some of Blair’s internal enemies charge that he has no vision for the third term. This was his response, opening up a cupboard that spills out schemes and plans.
If it was boring, it was deliberately, reassuringly boring: Look how many ideas I have up my sleeve! Some were familiar, others will excite. The cumulative effect was to realise the extent that Labour dominates the domestic landscape.
Mainly Brighton gave a warm, if not wild, embrace to a leader who many assumed would either be gone or in deep peril by now. He did what he had to do, ticking every box in workmanlike fashion. He returned to bread-and-butter politics and showed a humbler face. The cheers and ovations may have been encouraged, but the final impression was of a leader who is not about to be removed in a party coup.
Still, that was last Tuesday. How long the ”healing”, as Blair called it, lasts is a different question. Tellingly, there was no standout line from the speech, a phrase that will be quoted and requoted. This may be an address that did its job on the day, but will not last much longer. — Â