And it was not entirely a joke. People of my generation, who had grown up during 18 years of Thatcherism and watched a tired Conservative administration eventually drown in scandal and sleaze, genuinely sensed in Blair and New Labour something different. We believed they were going to give us a smarter, cleaner politics.
It certainly felt that way in the spring of 1997, when day after day the sun shone in a clear blue sky–a rare treat in usually gray Britain. The weather reflected the national mood; we were about to make a fresh start. Those spring weeks were dominated by an election campaign, but it was hardly a contest: everyone knew Blair and Labour would win. Blair captured the mood, that bright morning when the votes were counted. It was a “new dawn.”
What’s remarkable is how long the honeymoon lasted. When a scandal broke early in his tenure–alleging that Labour had taken a donation from the boss of Formula 1 motor racing in return for a shift in government policy–the prime minister killed the issue simply by going on television and declaring, “I’m a pretty straight kind of guy.” Voters believed him; the scandal withered. It’s this bond of trust between Blair and the voters which the postwar row over Iraq has frayed so badly. It’s not so much this or that specific charge or tussle with the BBC, but rather the nagging sense that the P.M. led the country into war on false pretenses, that he was not “pretty straight” after all. Every day that goes by without the discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq–when Blair insisted they were there and aimed at us–reduces the public trust a little bit more.
That is not the only loss. The greater casualty is the sense that New Labour were better than their rivals, that they were not just politicians as usual. True, some of that had been eroding anyway, as voters tired of Labour “spin” and truth manipulation. But after Iraq, the Blair crowd seems just like any other band of politicians, playing whatever tricks will get them the result they want. This is not just bad for Labour. It is probably bad for British politics itself. There is no knight in gleaming armor, no new Tony Blair, ready to saddle up and take over. The Tories are bereft, still traumatized by their last two election wipeouts, and led by a man, Iain Duncan Smith, as lacking in charisma as Blair has buckets of the stuff.
With no new champion to rally behind, Britons risk slumping into cynicism. Disillusioned with the P.M. they chose six years ago, they could soon come to believe there will never be a leader worth following, that all politicians are either knaves or fools. The result could be a further decline in voter turnout, a movement toward extremist factions (such as the anti-immigration British National Party, which has recently made noticeable gains) or, more likely, a sullen withdrawal from the public realm altogether. Disappointed by this government, Britons could soon lose their faith in government itself.
