When Tony Blair visited Washington before the Group of Eight
summit meeting at Gleneagles, Scotland, in July, his
finance minister, Chancellor of the
Exchequer Gordon Brown, insisted that
it was his job to announce the progress Mr. Blair had made in
discussions with President George W. Bush about debt
relief when the prime minister returned to London.
It is Mr. Brown who has made most of the running in the heightened
campaign over the past few years for debt
relief and much greater aid for Africa. And it is Mr. Brown who,
at least until recently, the powerful Whitehall civil service
machine has assumed to be on the verge of taking over the reins
of power from Mr. Blair.
For although he is fêted in the United States and many
other parts of the world, Mr. Blair has for some time now been
deeply unpopular with his own political party, and indeed in
the country at large. Until recently the
general perception in the UK was that it was only a matter of
time before Mr. Blair stepped down to make room for his long-time
rival and heir apparent, Mr. Brown. Now some people are not so
sure.
Mr. Blair’s support for President George W. Bush over Iraq
is the main reason why Mr. Blair’s popularity has plummeted.
It has been fairly well established that Mr. Blair was, at the
very least, cavalier with the British public about the reasons
for invading Iraq and about the threat posed by Saddam
Hussein.
Mr. Blair’s bleakest moment came during the early phases
of the general election campaign this spring. The Labour Party’s
private polling indicated that this political giant on the world
stage was so distrusted and disliked by his own party, and by
other electors
canvassed on doorsteps, that he stood to lose most of his 170-strong
Parliamentary majority in the May 5 general
election.
Faced with this glimpse of the abyss, Mr. Blair sent Alastair
Campbell, former spin doctor to what is often termed “New” Labour,
to negotiate peace terms with Mr. Brown, who had headed Labour’s
successful election campaigns of 1997 and 2001. Irritated by
Mr. Brown’s open ambition to succeed him, Mr. Blair had
sidelined Mr. Brown from the 2005 contest. Mr. Campbell pleaded
with Mr. Brown to return to center stage. He did, and Labour’s
electoral fortunes improved immediately and dramatically. It
was generally assumed that the
quid pro quo for Mr. Brown’s
help was a promise by Mr. Blair that he would step down within
a couple of years and back Mr. Brown as his successor.
It is not within a British prime minister’s powers to appoint
his successor, but Mr. Brown is the obvious favorite for election
as Party Leader if Mr. Blair stands down reasonably soon. Last
year Mr. Blair announced that he would not run for a fourth term
as prime minister. Although in theory Mr. Blair could remain
in 10 Downing Street until 2010, most political observers expect
him to leave well before then.
At least they did until two recent events. The first was the “No” vote
cast by the French in their referendum on the European Constitutional
Treaty on May 29; the second the terrible moment on July 7, when
the long-feared terrorist
attack on London took place.
The French vote is widely seen as having let Mr. Blair off an
especially awkward hook by removing the need for him to hold
the British referendum on the constitution he had promised for
2006. Mr. Blair wants to go down in
history as the prime minister who finally resolved the ambiguity
of Britain’s place in Europe; but he would have manifestly
failed in this ambition if the referendum did not go his way,
and the odds were that he would lose it. Either way, he
was expected to leave office after the
referendum.
In the unlikely event that the vote was “Yes,” Mr.
Blair could have departed graciously, claiming finally to have
reconciled the British nation to the
European Union. If the answer was
“
No,” inexorable pressure would have mounted for him to
resign. Now,
however, with plans for the referendum suspended, there is no
obvious date for his departure.
Secondly, the terrorist attacks have brought the prime minister
back into the limelight. Mr. Blair has a way of rising to tragic
occasions his public comments after the death of Princess
Diana
provided an early example and far less attention was
initially paid in the British media to any possible connection
between the terrorist attack and Mr. Blair’s support for
the war in Iraq than to the statesmanlike and dignified
manner in which he responded to the terrorist atrocity in front
of a worldwide audience.
As the weeks have passed, polls have shown that most of the public
disagrees with Mr. Blair’s view that there was no link
between the terrorist attacks and Britain’s involvement
in Iraq. Meanwhile, however, Mr. Blair has come to the fore as
the European leader whose job
it is to preside over meetings of the
European Council in the second half
of this year, and thus try to lead the
European Union out of the crisis created by the rejection of
the constitution by French and Dutch voters. Mr. Blair has bounced
back from his low point, and appears to be relishing the big
stage again. This has led some observers including
people who have known him for a long time to
speculate that he will want to hang on for considerably longer.
Nevertheless, the strong view in Labour Party circles and among
civil
servants who are well seasoned at
spotting the shifting sands of political power is that the entire
British political system is in the process of witnessing a slow
handover from Mr. Blair to Mr. Brown.
The two men have been close
political associates and competitors for over 20 years, and there
is little love lost between their rival camps. Mr. Brown has
long been impatient to take over, and undoubtedly remains the
strong favorite to do so.
If he does, the United States need not have any doubts about
his commitment to the Atlantic alliance, despite widespread British
hostility towards President Bush. Mr. Brown is a great admirer
of the United States, takes his annual vacation on Cape Cod,
and has even been quoted as saying he would like Britain to be
more like America. He is also at least as responsible as Mr.
Blair for Labour’s adoption of market economics and privatization.
Mr. Brown was known to be skeptical about the Iraq adventure,
yet as
treasury secretary he financed Britain’s participation,
and, when cornered at a crucial stage of the election campaign,
conceded that he would have done the same as Mr. Blair had he
been in his shoes. All the same, nobody has ever
accused Mr. Brown of being President Bush’s “poodle,” the
derogatory label often attached to Mr. Blair, and some
analysts believe that Mr. Brown’s very distance from Mr.
Bush in the public mind would make it easier for him to pursue
pro-American policies as prime minister.
His main interests, however, are
domestic; he looks overseas, especially to the United States,
for lessons in how to improve the UK’s economic performance
at home. While an admirer of the U.S. economy, and in no way
an old-fashioned socialist, he still feels strongly about certain
aspects of U.S. society, such as the estimated 40 million
Americans without health insurance.
Although not known for his expertise in foreign affairs, he has
shown much more interest recently, most noticeably in leading
the campaign for debt relief and more foreign aid to Africa.
Mr. Brown is a fast learner, but he would have to be ready to
delegate more as prime minister, and also to be more diplomatic
in his relations with the rest of Europe. But, although at times
he has rubbed his European counterparts the wrong way, there
is little doubt that poor economic performances by Germany and
France have created greater interest in Mr. Brown’s policies
in continental Europe. Nicolas Sarkozy, the French presidential
aspirant, says he wants to know “how Britain does it.”
As Chancellor of the Exchequer for eight years the longest
chancellorship since that of Nicholas Vansittart (1812-1823) Mr.
Brown is widely credited with having steered the British economy
rather more successfully than his
colleagues in the euro zone, which he
is in no hurry to join. But the British economy has slowed this
year, and the gloss is beginning to wear off. That is one reason
why it is in Mr. Brown’s
interest for Mr. Blair to step down soon, while Mr. Brown can
still take credit for a long period of economic success. After
all, Mr. Brown’s favorite joke is: “There are two
kinds of Chancellor: those who fail, and those who get out in
time.”
Another reason is that experience suggests that the longer the
heir apparent waits, the more vulnerable he
becomes. In relatively recent Labour Party history, Denis Healey,
Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1974 to 1979, had to wait around
too long, and never
secured the succession to James Callaghan. At present, Mr. Brown
has huge support in the body of the Labour Party and has no obvious
rivals, but one can be sure they will appear from somewhere if
Mr. Blair hangs on until 2008 or 2009 (in theory, the next general
election need not be held until 2010.)
Mr. Brown’s supporters are already becoming impatient.
They feel they have been tricked by Mr. Blair before, and fear
it could happen again. But their record of plotting Mr. Blair’s
downfall is not a happy one. They usually tend to chicken out indeed
one astute observer believes that Mr. Brown will never make it
to 10 Downing Street because he lacks the killer instinct. Mr.
Brown has in fact
rescued Mr. Blair from trouble over
a number of his more controversial
policies such as opening up the state health service
to the private sector, and introducing higher tuition fees for
university students.
The Blair camp is now using recent events to suggest the prime
minister will carry on indefinitely. Others in the Labour Party
acknowledge that he has handled recent weeks well, and that
he obviously cannot go during the EU presidency, which lasts
until the end of 2005. But there is a strong feeling that there
will be rumblings in the ranks if he does not depart gracefully
in 2006,
possibly saying farewell in a speech
to the Labour Party conference in
September.
William Keegan is senior economics commentator for the London
Observer and author of The Prudence of Gordon Brown, published
by John Wiley & Sons Ltd., Chichester,
England.
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