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Gold9472
01-02-2006, 12:35 PM
Blair is now a liability
The Labour party must make a stand against the prime minister's messianic delusions

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/columnist/story/0,9321,1676518,00.html

Roy Hattersley
Monday January 2, 2006

Labour enters 2006 facing the hard fact that, from now on, almost everything that Tony Blair does will improve the Tory party's prospects. The one certain bonus that his leadership guarantees is the benefit that flows from his domination of prime minister's question time.

In his knockabout way, Blair is the most effective House of Commons performer of his generation. The voting public may not be impressed by the revelation that the realignment of Conservative MEPs will mean that they sit between Miss Mussolini and Kilroy-Silk in the European parliament. But the weekly slaughter of David Cameron does wonders for backbench morale. In the days that lie ahead, there may be little else will to lift their spirits.

For half-an-hour on Wednesday afternoons, the parliamentary Labour party - with the exception of the pathological dissidents - will enjoy the warm glow of unity. During the rest of the week, divisions within the ranks will be too deep and wide to be obscured by the memory of a brief triumph.

Those divisions are the almost exclusive responsibility of the prime minister. Having coerced the party into accepting alien views on health service reorganisation, student loans and the widening gap between rich and poor, he has blundered into a policy area from which he must retreat or bring the government close to destruction.

In the argument about secondary schools, Tony Blair and Andrew Adonis (supported by the Tory leadership) are on one side and the rest of the Labour party (supported by a vast majority of teachers and most education academics) on the other.

The prime minister may believe that on the long march to improved education, everybody is out of step except him. But, in truth, he has broken ranks in what amounts to an ideological desertion. It is wholly unreasonable to expect 300 Labour MPs and 200,000 party members to betray their beliefs on the instruction of the prime minister and his satrap. And they will not do it. Divided parties struggle to win elections. Blair knows it.Yet he seems incapable of abating his obsession with policies that tear Labour apart.

These days, Blair's speeches, on almost any subject, are divided into two parts. The first insists that "modernisation" and "reform" are essential to peace and prosperity. The second always implies - and sometimes says outright - that only he can be trusted to bring about those essential changes.

Indeed, that is why he remains in Downing Street, battling against the forces of ignorance and reaction that beset him on every side. The only true definition of reform is his definition. The only effective form of modernisation is his form of modernisation. His policies must be entrenched before his successor has a chance to take the country back to the dark ages.

So where does that leave Gordon Brown? The Tory party wants to represent the chancellor as what it crudely calls "old Labour", devoted to the doctrine that "the gentleman in Whitehall knows best".

The prime minister must know that his attitude towards policymaking plays into their hands. He must know too that the picture he helps to paint is worse than a caricature. It is a deception. Brown, and people like him, are reformers too. They just have a definition of reform that is different from the one Blair has picked up from his friends outside the party. Labour MPs who represent marginal constituencies ought to start counting the cost of the damage that is being done to the man who will lead them into the next general election.

There is nothing very much that they can do about speeding the prime minister's departure. Talk of a stalking horse running against him is absurd, and he is in such a messianic mood that he will regard every defeat as a sign that he, and only he, is the way, the truth and the light.

A couple of months ago, I suggested to a cabinet minister that Blair "would be crucified" if he attempted a covert return to secondary selection and was told in reply: "He thinks that there are historical precedents for it happening to people like him."

Perhaps the widening split is inevitable. But if the prime minister is determined to end his Downing Street years with a battle that damages both his reputation and the party he leads, at least Labour can make sure that it is fought on the right ground. This is not a year for drawing back. It is a year to make a stand.