Small war, not many thrilled

Iraq never mattered
Unlike virtually every parliament of the twentieth century, the dominant political issue in the one just gone by was chiefly that of war and diplomacy. The war in Iraq divided the broad left-liberal hegemony that British politics has amounted to now for more than a decade, and even, by times, seemed to call into question the survival of a government with a majority closer to 200 than 100 in the House of Commons. Now this column bows to no one in its belief that old news is the deadest form of facts there ever was, but it is truly disconcerting to remind oneself of the uniform assertions about the future that have preoccupied Britain since that war, until, perhaps, 3 or 4 months ago. Before, during, and for several years after the war (thanks to the ongoing British military presence there, the unexpected matter of Kelly, albeit emerging from the entirely warranted scrutiny of the failure of the WMD claims to stand up, and, to a lesser degree, Britain’s participation in the largely illusory “war on terror”) pundits and politicians agreed on the distorting primacy of the war. Other, conventional issues reared up, but whatever the government did or said about them, and however the official opposition measured up to these Labour policies, the central problem for the government was the public’s attitude towards ‘Iraq’. Partly out of sincerity, partly out of fear of that public disapproval, and to a considerably under-acknowledged degree, significantly due to a desire to use any weapon to smash Blair for any number of reasons, the Parliamentary Labour Party was put under severe stress by the war. But it never cracked. And this, the sheer resilience of Blairism, or the late maturity of the Labour movement, whichever it amounts to, is the key to why this war didn’t have any serious political impact when it might have done, and has therefore allowed the regime to safely survive to the moment when it was a spent controversy.

Immediately most people will argue, ‘but surely the war has done one fundamental thing: it has shattered, irrecoverably, Tony Blair’s reputation for honesty?’ Certainly having ‘lied’ over Iraq remains a problem of perception for the Prime Minister, but this affliction needs to be qualified twice over. The first is natural wastage, which is to say, where does anyone think an eight year old ‘New Labour’ government’s reputation for probity was likely to be anyway? Truth to tell, Tony Blair’s reputation was never one of being monkishly honest, blurting out any uncomfortable fact no matter what the cost to himself or others. No, Mr Blair’s image was that of the man fit for the therapy age, at his hardest a salesman, pushing a product, but far more accurately catching the public’s impression of the Labour leader is surely Private Eye’s device of a worthy, hand-wringing vicar? Tony Blair was always associated with soft words and flannel, with a willingness to be liked rather than feared and respected, with, in short, some distance being evident between truth’s needs and his needs. Now, that’s not to say that Iraq hasn’t crystallised this general feeling, that it hasn’t provided a supremely convenient peg for the press to hang a public suspicion on, but it was the direction Tony Blair’s image was long tending towards, regardless of Iraq.

Almost as important though is quite who has been offended by the Prime Minister’s alleged deception over Iraq, or over the fact that he did it at all. Simply put, it wasn’t Tories. And whereas one might have thought, vexing your own base has got to be the daftest, most suicidal thing any political leader can do, it has turned out to be yet again the political genius of the Prime Minister in action. For what is the secret of Blairism? namely that left wing voters feel they are either left with no choice but him, or, are genuinely deprived of choice because what it took to be progressive and against the war also entailed support for policies bourgeois bohemians blanche at. While theoretically right wing voters feel as attracted to Mr Blair as even the sort of vigorous ‘Conservatives’ employed by, oh, The Times. It’s a neat trick, and one that almost certainly the Chancellor of the Exchequer for example could not pull off. Accordingly we would be remiss if we did not note the scale of Tony Blair’s achievement: he took the country into a massively unpopular war; he has had to cope with a seriously unpopular peace and ongoing military commitment; his own party contained those most devoutly opposed to his course of action; and, no apology, contrition or for that matter, very obvious success has been offered by way of justification. Yet he gets away with it all. How?

Certainly the inept part played by Iain Duncan Smith’s Conservatives, in being more Bushite than Bush, was a Godsend to Tony Blair. Michael Howard, to name only one, though David Davis is another, would have neither been as tactically inept, nor would they have been anywhere near as sincere in the covering flank they would have offered the government. In private, Michael Howard is scathing about George Bush, the people who surround him, and most of his policies. Yet none of these inclinations are ones the Tories have felt they can display to the public. If the explanation for Tory incompetence is self-evident if circular (they’re persistently incompetent), the failure of the Lib Dems to capitalise on Labour’s misfortunes to its left is mysterious. The only one I can come up with comes back to the people who were most opposed to the war. These, in short, are the most sectarian section of the Labour left, and therefore the people least likely to consider consorting, in ballot boxes at any rate, with the hated Liberals. Factionalism, and the absurd over-influence of the Trots, greatly helped Blair as well, in that although the “anti-war movement” plainly stood on the side of the big battalions, it never in itself achieved any genuine credibility.

None of these calculations could reasonably have occurred to Tony Blair — when, by all accounts, he was already committed to any war George Bush happened to fight — so we can acquit him of any notion that he expected to pass by the war unscathed. In a pious sense, the Prime Minister is being rewarded, via the enormous lack of public interest in the war, for being brave and determined. In another, he is reaping the benefits that stem from governing an Anglophone country — to wit, the electorate’s deep, fundamental and every lasting disinterest in abroad. Still, if the Labour left in Parliament had any attachment to the principles they parade in their CLPs and letters to Tribune, he would have been toast long ago. Look there then to how he got away with it.

For the duration of the campaign, the Social Affairs Unit will be publishing regular commentaries on the progress of the UK election. These commentaries represent the views of the anonymous commentator, not those of the Social Affairs Unit, its Trustees, Advisors or Director.