John Rentoul: Blair the betrayed: Labour will be oh-so-sorry when he's gone

When the Prime Minister finally steps off the stage, Gordon Brown and David Cameron will find that he leaves behind a template against which they will both be found wanting. We are now in the age of the second-raters

Sunday, 13 May 2007

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"Too Damn Good for the Lot of Them." Unfortunately, the Daily Mail's headline the day after Margaret Thatcher's exit from No 10 has not been dug out of the archives and pressed into service again. Partly, this is because Tony Blair's departure has been so long drawn out that it resembles one of those lovesick teenage telephone conversations - "Bye. Bye. Bye. Put the phone down. No, you put the phone down."

By the time he actually gets into the car to be driven down Downing Street for the last time, we will all have forgotten why he is going. Much of the explanation for Thatcher's blub must have been simple shock at the speed of her dispatch - not that there was ever much danger, for a man of Blair's self-control, of his repeating that part of the performance.

But the other reason why the air is not thick with cries of betrayal is that Blair never created a personal following in the Labour Party or the press on the Thatcherite scale. By that failure Blair may have served his party well, because look what happened when the irreconcilables in the Conservative Party and the Tory press sought to avenge the "treachery with a smile on its face" of 1990. They tore the party to pieces and made it seem to otherwise intelligent people a good idea to elect as Tory leader one of the chief rebels of the Thatcherite tendency, Iain Duncan Smith.

The paradox is that Thatcher was not in fact betrayed - except perhaps by the incompetence of her own advisers. And it was not her Cabinet that did for her: it was the majority of Tory MPs, who came to a cold and correct conclusion that she would lose them the imminent election because she refused to ditch the poll tax.

That Blair has been betrayed, however, should not be in doubt. He is too clever to admit it, of course, because that would be to expose the weakness of his position. But he has been in a perilously weak position ever since half his backbench MPs voted against him on the Iraq war. That is the real story behind his promise in September 2004 not to fight a fourth election: it was not a mistake, it was a tactic of self-preservation. And it is why he will tender his resignation from the office of Prime Minister on 27 June this year rather than at the end of next year, which would have given him a longer stretch at the top than the Great She-Elephant herself.

He was right to say, as he did in his resignation statement in Sedgefield on Thursday, that 10 years of him was "long enough" for the British people. But only because his party had so lost the will to live, let alone to defend vigorously the achievements of one of the finest governments in modern British history.

They will be sorry when he's gone. They will be particularly sorry when they realise how casually disdainful they had become about one of the most successful and long-lasting left-wing governments in the developed world. It may not be left-wing enough for them, but that is sort of the point, isn't it? If it had been, it wouldn't have lasted.

The rest of us will be sorry, too. Well, all right, not sorry exactly. The average British voter is an unsentimental animal, and can "move on" from an ex-prime minister quite as callously as Blair was able to move on from sacking his ministers, as Alastair Campbell once revealed. But the moment those that have been built up and torn down are out of the door, much of the bitterness directed at them is drained and rehabilitation quickly becomes possible. And the remembered-Blair will immediately become a template against which both Gordon Brown and David Cameron will be measured. Measured and found wanting. In both cases.

It will be a while before we see a politician in Britain with the sheer bravura cheek of Blair, for example. The chutzpah of someone who can apologise on behalf of his party for its folly in getting rid of him, as he did when he was forced to put a 12-month limit on his time in office by the coup of last September. "The first thing I'd like to do is to apologise actually, on behalf of the Labour Party for the last week, which, with everything that's been going on back here and in the world, has not been our finest hour, to be frank."

Well, someone had to do it, and sometimes if you want a job done properly, you've got to do it yourself.

But the Labour Party ought to apologise for forcing out a global statesman of such stature, a national leader of such articulacy and a social reformer of such energy. It ought to apologise for conniving in a media culture that has, on the basis of opposition to the invasion of Iraq, become nearly nihilistic about the possibilities of politics.

The problem for the Labour Party is that this media culture is not even-handed. It does not treat government and opposition the same. Brown has to fight the tide of anti-government opprobrium that has already largely shifted from Blair to him, while Cameron is being given an easy ride.

Now is hardly the time for Labour to bring on the Second XI. Not that Brown is anything like as flawed as his detractors claim. As we saw last week, he is a better, more relaxed and witty speaker than the caricature painted by his enemies. He will make a good prime minister, albeit not as good as Blair. He would make a better prime minister, I think, than Cameron, who falls short - to use the vogue phrase of last week - of the Blair standard in different ways. Brown is Blair Heavy; but Cameron is Blair Lite.

Brown made a good speech at his leadership launch on Friday. It certainly exceeded the low expectations that had been set for it by much of the press. It was encouraging that he promised to press on with the "important structural changes" in schools, in partnership with "teachers, parents, pupils and business", the fourth being the most significant.

"That sounds like Blair plus," said one Blairite minister to me with detectable relief.

In answer to questions from journalists, Brown refused to give the Daily Mirror the assurance it sought that there would be no expansion of the role of private companies in the NHS, even going so far as to use the horrible word but essential concept, "contestability".

Brown has two challenges over the next few weeks, however, to prove that his team is not the Second XI. The first test is his Cabinet. Here, John Reid, to misquote Geoffrey Howe when he precipitated the fall of Thatcher, has broken the captain's bat before sending him out to the crease. I was astonished by the commentary to the effect that Reid, by pre-announcing his resignation as Home Secretary last weekend, had done Brown a favour by giving him scope for a wider reshuffle. What Reid has done is remove one of the few really substantial politicians - himself - from the front rank of the battle against Cameron. It is not as if the Labour ministries are so brimming with talent - as opposed to clever but inexperienced and mostly characterless professional politicians - that Brown can afford to leave one of Labour's best brains on the backbenches.

What occurred between the Chancellor and the Home Secretary will emerge in the fullness of time, probably under the terms of the 30-day rule that now seems to have taken the place of the old official secrets convention. But the obvious explanation would be that Reid wanted a guarantee that he would stay in his post, which Brown was evasive about giving. It may be that the real explanation is different, and reflects better on Brown - whatever, the outcome is bad news for him.

The other "Second XI" test is the composition of Brown's backroom team at No 10. The Chancellor has some talented people working for him, but now faces a choice between the thugs and the thinkers.

It was Blair's good fortune - although he made his own luck too - to face a Conservative Party that was unelectable for so long. Brown takes to the field with a very different slope. The Conservatives have finally got themselves a leader who looks like a credible prime minister. Cameron's policies can easily be pulled apart, but, as one minister told me last week, he has "clearly detoxified the Tory party" - among young people especially, the word Conservative no longer conjures up a word association of economic mismanagement, anti-Euromania and social Luddism.

Of course, Cameron is no match for Blair. He has learnt the moves of the chess pieces, but does not understand the game. First there was the embarrassment of the Defector-Management Programme run by George Osborne, the shadow chancellor. Both David Laws (Liberal Democrat) and Andrew Adonis (Labour minister) said No, firmly and publicly. When Blair brought over Alan Howarth and Shaun Woodward, it was done in conditions of absolute secrecy. Then there was the entertainment of Greg Dyke, a Labour core-voter, not standing as the Tory candidate for London mayor.

But Cameron does not have to be as good as Blair to pose a more potent threat to Labour at the next election. And Brown does not have to be much worse than Blair to pitch the electoral arithmetic into a hung parliament.

Which is why one of the most intriguing lines in Brown's speech on Friday was this: "In today's world, all of us want our voice to be heard, our choices to count and public services tailored to our personal needs." Now, choice in the public services is an article of Blairite faith, but it sounded to me very like a keeping of options open on the subject of electoral reform.

It would not be at all surprising if Brown were to resurrect Blair's broken promise of a referendum on changing the voting system. Sir Menzies Campbell's party would never let him prop up a Conservative government if the Liberal Democrats end up holding the balance of power at the next election. But a promise of voting reform would be an insurance policy for Brown, binding Sir Menzies even more tightly to the perpetuation of a Brown government.

We will be sorry when Blair is gone, because we have forgotten what politics used to be like. On 27 June, welcome to the era of the second-rate.