In his new book, 1 out of 10 - From Downing Street Vision to Classroom Reality, Peter Hyman describes the visceral hatred Tony Blair has for the 'old' Labour party. Hyman, who was a speech writer for the Prime Minister until he decided to return to real life and teach in a comprehensive school, singles out several causes for this contempt. To paraphrase, they include the party's love of pointless but ferocious argument (the viciousness of National Executive meetings used to leave Richard Crossman physically ill), its fealty to ancient household gods such as Clause 4, the presumed sanctity of all trade unions and their leaders, and worst of all, its thoroughgoing commitment to failure.
There were, without doubt, people in the Labour party who detested being in government since government meant compromising their sacred ideals. Labour administrations did not exactly come close to building the new Jerusalem, unless you count the founding of the welfare state in 194551, and as a result most recent Labour administrations were serious disappointments for the party's supporters. Safer to cling on to your ideals and let the Tories be hated.
This is the cast of mind that Blair loathes. At Question Time in the Commons in January this year he was asked by a Tory MP, Michael Spicer, exactly what he had against old Labour. He replied, after a moment's thought, that it never won two consecutive terms of government (not strictly true, since Harold Wilson pulled off that trick twice though two of his four ministries were short) and, perhaps, it never put the Conservative Party flat on its back, which is where they are now.
"Thankfully, we are now running an economy with low inflation, low mortgage rates and low unemployment ." The answer tailed off into a wellrehearsed disquisition on the failures of previous Tory governments, but there is no doubt that he meant the criticism to apply equally to old Labour, which in Blair's book had brought economic disaster. On top of that, old Labour was uneasy with power, far too quick to give it away, happier to wallow in comfortable failure. He might have added "they ran the economy on the basis of throwing taxpayer's money at every problem," but, as the Irish say, he caught himself on just in time.
One of the reasons Tony Benn is so detested by many of the people who worked with him was the way that, after the shock of the 1979 election, the one that brought Mrs Thatcher to Downing Street, he turned on so many of his old colleagues, accusing them, in effect, of treachery to the party and that Great Movement Of Theirs. Benn's speech at the first party conference after the election had many former ministers almost literally livid with rage. If he had thought the government so odious, so treasonous, so divorced from Labour principles, why on earth had he stayed on in the Cabinet? Power always brings the need to compromise one's ideals, so what right had Benn to claim after the event that he remained pure and untainted? The mantra always was: "socialism did not fail; it was never tried." This was a classic instance of the party falling back onto the easy bed of failure, like Oblomov without that get up and go.
It's hard to exaggerate the extent to which Labour was geared to losing. Before Blair, attacks in the Tory press were answered with a shrug, a despairing "what can you expect from the Mail, or the Express?" Labour press spokesmen were just too nice. If they didn't like something you had written they might mention it; they could even chide you gently, but they would never send an email full of fourletter words, or threaten you with being barred from receiving any news, as Alastair Campbell does. That was the real threat to journalists not the bellowing, not the swear words, not even the calls to your editor at 1am or at 7, just as he's got to sleep or still catching another five minutes snooze it was the terror of being outside the loop. No political editor could ever say to his boss: "Sorry I didn't have the story that's in all the other papers; Alastair doesn't like me."
Now he is back, and already we can see the overkill. The abusive emails to the BBC. The ludicrous posters does anyone really imagine that the picture of Michael Howard dangling a watch in front of his face didn't say: "Fagin, hypnotist, thieving Jew"? Oh, of course, it wasn't meant like that, but it tapped a rich and resonant atavistic vein. New Labour never ignores any chance to succeed. They're like the Australian rugby union team playing Japan why score 75 points when you could score 120?
That's why the election is going to be so horrid. Blair cannot stand failure. He cannot tolerate the notion of failure being thought remotely acceptable. The idea that you can fail and still live a rich and fulfilled life, true to your principles and your values, is something he cannot understand or deal with. He is determined to win and will do whatever it takes to achieve it.
