Brian Monteith: Blair's journey is still Labour's

Published on Thursday 2 September 2010 18:06

Bang, crash, wallop! I suppose it had to happen sometime but it has been a long time coming - a political autobiography by a prime minister that is worth reading.

It is page-turning, once in a political generation stuff.

On Wednesday when it was launched, I saw Tony Blair's tome in an airport bookshop and walked right past it. I had no intention of picking it up, never mind buying a copy.

Political biographies are notorious for being boring, full of self-justification, lacking in humility and subject to a heavy discount within weeks of being published.

Usually, a Sunday paper will pick up the best parts and serialise them over a couple of weeks, the publisher often being willing to sell the rights to try to recoup the hefty advance that is dished out to the politician.

There are, of course, exceptions to this general rule; the Tory Alan Clark wrote a three-volume diary that was entertaining both for its candour and its salaciousness. Richard Crossman, the Labour cabinet member and leading intellectual, also delivered a three-volume diary that exposed the depth of distrust and chaos at the heart of Harold Wilson's governments in the 1960s.

Both are required reading for political historians but neither of them were prime ministers.

Others, such as Roy Jenkins and Barbara Castle, revealed some nasty truths about internal squabbling in otherwise very lengthy and self-congratulatory diatribes.

Indeed it is fair to say that Labour politicians have usually been more revealing in their memoirs while Conservatives have been more reserved. I put this down to the generally ignored fact that Labour politicians are more disciplined when in government while Conservatives leak like a sieve due to their self-indulgent ambition and impatience. Tories thus have nothing to say after they have lost power, for they have told it all to the media already, while Labour ministers feel that at last they can relax and tell it as it was.

The length to which Blair has gone, for instance in claiming he was to all intents and purposes blackmailed by Gordon Brown will shake Labour politicians to the core, whatever side they thought they were on.

Criticism of publishing this week, just as the ballot papers for Labour leadership are being dispatched, is unjustified.

If you are launching a political memoir, you will always aim for the period just before the party conference circuit to maximize sales - and the idea that the author has any say in the exact date of the launch is risible - that is entirely out of his hands.

The best he could do was cancel the launch party in London and that's what Blair did, by suitably having the excuse of a dinner at the White House.

The point about Blair's book is that it confirms in many respects that he was, like Thatcher, an aberration in his own party.

Thatcher was not so much a Tory as an old-style Classical Liberal. She despised the patronising all-male public school establishment that worked on the principle of Buggins' turn and class boundaries without any regard to merit or hard work.

Blair was never a red-blooded socialist and despised those within his party who were willing to see hard working aspirational people suffer all because they wanted to stick to their own perverted dogma of a failed prophet of the 19th century.

Those within the Labour Party who were already against Tony Blair will now try to cast him in the mould of the arch-Labour hate figure of the 1930s - Ramsay MacDonald - the first Labour prime minister who in his second term put country before party and formed a National Government.

In that respect, Blair has probably played into their hands, but I doubt he cares.

More important to him is trying to defend his legacy.

It is clear that in the current Labour leadership election it is open season on Tony Blair.

Labour has lost the election and Blair is being kicked around as the candidates look to distance themselves from the most successful prime minister Labour ever had. They clearly feel it is too soon to kick Gordon Brown while he is down.

Tony Blair has no such scruples and has nothing to lose.

Will Gordon Brown respond in kind? He has a book coming out this autumn on the recent financial crisis but I expect that is already being printed and would have to be recalled to be rewritten - but wait for next year.

The danger for Labour is that if the party cannot come to terms with the Blair legacy and work out what people liked and what people hated they will make the same mistakes as the Tories did with Thatcher - and remain in opposition for a decade or more.

How they respond to Blair's first book - it is unlikely to be his last - will determine how long they remain out of power.