Peter Oborne

Two weeks ago, in the course of an interview with the Observer, Tony Blair claimed that he had already said sorry for issuing false information about Iraq. This is what he said: ‘We’ve apologised for the information that was given being wrong.’ I have since ransacked government statements, but found no trace of any apology. Downing Street, when asked, has also been unable to shed any light on the matter. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Prime Minister’s claim was another of those lies which regularly drop from his lips. Two days after the falsehood in the Observer, the Prime Minister made his annual speech to the Labour party conference.

Two salient facts define the national political predicament this autumn. The first is a growing sense of disquiet about Tony Blair. Experts often speak of the lack of ‘trust’ which shows up in opinion polls. But there is more to it than that. People are beginning to sense that there is something rum about this Prime Minister, and that he is no longer quite 16 annas to the rupee. In the normal course of events this sense of unease might translate into a general election defeat. But this brings me to the second singularity. While distaste for Tony Blair is palpably growing both within the Labour party and elsewhere, there is no agreement at all about an alternative. The internal opposition to Tony Blair, after a summer of perfervid preparation, elected not to strike.

It was beyond a shadow of doubt an outstanding silly season, the best by far in recent years, with an excellent crop of stories. Leaving aside the daily tragedies in Iraq and Sudan, too heartbreaking to ponder for long without giving way to despair, August delivered some fine material: the emergence of the Notting Hill Tories, the amorous exploits of the Home Secretary and the arrest of Mark Thatcher. Mark Thatcher, now urgently in need of a biographer, produced the best of these three diversions. Thatcher’s defining characteristic is a preposterously inflated estimation of his own intelligence and abilities.

There has been a remarkable new buoyancy among Labour MPs this week. This can be partly accounted for by the apparent improvement in Iraq, England’s footballing triumph over Croatia — and the fact that the government has not yet woken up to the full scale of the humiliation that awaits it at next month’s Leicester South by-election. But for many Labour MPs the new mood of optimism has nothing to do with any of these things. It is entirely related to last Thursday’s promise from Peter Hain, leader of the House of Commons, concerning the Hunting Bill. ‘We have received an assurance from Peter Hain,’ said Sir Gerald Kaufman later, ‘which I trust totally.’ There was a faint but unmistakable note of menace in Sir Gerald’s words.

Basically, these June elections are only about one thing: a massive vote of no confidence in the political class. It looks likely that the European election results, not to be announced until Sunday night, will throw up an astonishing statistic: half the voters have now abandoned the two mainstream parties. This figure is pregnant with meaning. Go back 60 years to the second world war and its long, benign aftermath. There was then a profound connection between rulers and ruled. Both Labour and Tory parties had memberships of well over one million. Politicians formed part of civic society, and shared the same values and notions as the British people. Study the language and structure of political debate of the time. It was serious, measured, alive and — above all — grown-up.

Just four weeks ago there was a powerful view at Westminster that it would be all up for Tony Blair after next week’s elections. This opinion was most widely expressed within the Labour party itself, where the Prime Minister was candidly seen as a liability. Labour’s campaign literature reflects this. Photographs of the Prime Minister are hard to find; it used to be impossible to escape from his grinning visage at election time. Labour’s opponents have been only too happy to remedy this oversight. Liberal Democrat pamphlets, almost without fail, give pride of place to photographs of the Prime Minister, often standing shoulder to shoulder with President Bush.

One important factor in New Labour’s special kind of political success has been its ability to capture independent institutions or individuals and convert them into accomplices. Again and again Tony Blair has pulled off this feat. In his early days he co-opted organisations as diverse as the Country Landowner’s Association, the CBI, the Government Information and Communications Service, the BritaininEurope campaign, and the Liberal Democrat party. The New Labour technique was simple. It targeted vulnerable individuals right at the top of the relevant organisation. An interesting early example was Ewen Cameron — now Sir Ewen — at the CLA. He was flattered by Downing Street, and some came to view him as a partial propagandist for government policy.

Peter Oborne reveals that an operation has been launched within the White House to protect the President’s most important ally, and that the Tories are under pressure to give the Prime Minister an easy ride F or months Westminster has been alive with talk about the potential damage that defeat for George Bush in this November’s Presidential contest would inflict on Tony Blair’s standing in the Labour party. This just goes to show how parochial Westminster political discourse has become. The much larger and more interesting issue — what would it mean for President Bush if, as now looks possible, Tony Blair will be driven out of office over the summer? — has been neglected. The President himself is scared stiff. It is easy to understand his alarm.

All my life, till this month, I have felt more proud than I could say to be British. I felt there were special and irreducible things that we stood for and would, if necessary, fight for: freedom, decency, fairness, humanity, the rule of law. Of course there have been blots — the Amritsar massacre, Bloody Sunday. But on the whole the conduct of British troops during the 30 years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, or our record during the second world war, has been outstanding. We have been a force for good in the world. Today there is no pleasure in being British. We are almost a pariah nation. Ordinary British citizens are now starting to learn about the terrible things that have been done in our name.

There is a substantial monograph to be written on the relationship between the Prime Minister and Margaret Thatcher. It began with abject, one-sided adoration. Colleagues recall Tony Blair, as a youngish MP, meeting Thatcher. They say it was embarrassing, the look of dog-like devotion he gave her. The second stage came when Tony Blair was leader of the opposition. He did everything he could to suck up. He told her ardent supporters on the Tory Right — above all the group of Eurosceptic death-squadders whose hatred of John Major was so intense that they favoured anything else, including a Labour government — how much he admired her. These conversations were part of a conscious strategy to give out the impression that Blair was Thatcher’s real successor.

Peter Oborne says that the Prime Minister is a client of Rupert Murdoch’s global empire — and he decided to hold a referendum on the EU constitution only because the press magnate told him to An essential part of the New Labour belief system is structured around the proposition that Tony Blair is a resolute, bold, decisive leader. The Prime Minister has worked hard to build and then to sustain this myth. Last October he informed the Labour party conference that ‘I can only go one way. I’ve not got a reverse gear.’ This pronouncement, made during a woeful attempt to emulate the oratorical successes of Margaret Thatcher two decades earlier, was palpable nonsense.

As Tony Blair mulled matters over last week at Government House, Bermuda, where he and his family spent Easter at a very reasonable £27 per night, the future must have looked ghastly. It was not just the prospect of this weekend’s meeting with President Bush, tricky though that undoubtedly is. The Bush visit was at first envisaged as a modest attempt to give a boost to the US President’s now fading electoral fortunes. The Kerry campaign was as dismayed as Bush strategists were elated by this most irregular attempt by a British prime minister to tamper with the US domestic electoral cycle. It is puzzling that the British Labour party has not caused more trouble as Tony Blair continues to pander to the most right-wing US president in living memory.