London
It was very possible, indeed easy, to spend a recent Sunday afternoon walking around west London without ever bumping up against the May 5 election campaign. It was a warm, sunny, and wind-free day. London positively glittered with prosperity. Half of the world seemed to be on vacation here. And I would hazard that more people were interested in the report that, according to 500 international chefs polled by Restaurant magazine, London now has more world-class restaurants than Paris and New York combined than in the IMF's criticism of Britain's budgetary "black hole."
Britain has now enjoyed uninterrupted economic growth for 13 years — and economic growth in 21 out of the last 23 years in all. It shows not only in the capitalist sheen of renovated London, with its biscuit-colored buildings that used to be black, but also in public attitudes. Politics is less important in people's lives. They look more to work, enterprise, education, and their own efforts for prosperity.
Insofar as they consider politics, they credit Labour with the good performance of the economy. That is not exactly false, but it is vastly oversimplified. The last recession ended in 1992, when the Tories had five years more to go in office. Britain's long-run economic recovery is the result of the Thatcherite reforms of the 1980s, the fiscal stabilization introduced by Tory chancellor Norman Lamont in 1992, and Labour chancellor Gordon Brown's granting of independence to the Bank of England in 1997. In that order of importance. Whatever the economics, however, the politics favor Labour, which now enjoys a 20-point lead over Michael Howard's Tories on the question of economic competence. That is a disastrous reversal for the Tories, who had hitherto been regarded as the "sound economy" party.
Attitudes toward the public sector are more complicated. Most Brits are unhappy with its falling standards: the long waiting lists and dirty hospitals in the National Health Service; the time spent by the police on form-filling rather than catching criminals; the fact that the schools graduate too many illiterates; and so on. Until recently they accepted the New Labour argument that these failures stem from past Tory underfunding. Gordon Brown followed through by pouring money into public services in the last two years.
But as public-sector performance continues to lag, doubts have set in and interest in quasi-market reform has grown. In their manifestos, both major parties respond with a very similar mix of more spending and greater "choice." Both, however, face public skepticism. The Tories are still not trusted to devote enough spending to the public sector. Blair's reform agenda, modest though it is, is generally expected to fall victim to Brown's centralizing, egalitarian, and redistributionist instincts (as, indeed, it largely did in the last four years). Labour's popular advantage over the Tories on public services is likely to shrink as public services continue to decline; for the moment, though, Blair's party still enjoys a slight lead.
On the economy and public services, then, the voters are inclined to vote Labour. Their support is unenthusiastic, and many voters will simply not bother to vote. Turnout last time fell to a historically low 59 percent, and while postal-vote reforms are likely to swell the numbers on May 5 (with fraudulent votes among others), the Don't Knows and Don't Cares will still be a major party between them. But unless the polls are substantially wrong, Tony Blair is cruising to a third term with a large majority.
Are there any issues that threaten to obstruct this? One might suppose that the Iraq war would exert some influence on the election. Some American conservatives regard it as a referendum on the war and will treat a Blair victory as a vindication. They are matched in Britain by anti-war critics on the left who highlight the war to weaken the prime minister. And the only major party to oppose the war — the Liberal Democrats — originally hoped it would win them left-wing votes from Labour. Yet none of this seems to be happening.
The popular attitude, shared by both main parties, is borrowed from Basil Fawlty: "Don't Mention the War." Blair sees it as a weakness because it revives last year's belief that he misled the country in order to support Bush. The Tories supported the war — their manifesto reiterates that support — which complicates their criticism of Blair's general trustworthiness. And the Lib-Dems have found that the voters seem more interested in other policies. Insofar as it has any short-term influence, Iraq will persuade a few Labour left-wingers to abstain or vote Lib-Dem. No more than that.
Its long-term influence in Britain is more sinister and should worry Americans. Because Blair undoubtedly exaggerated the immediate threat of Saddam Hussein's WMDs — far more, incidentally, than President Bush ever did — Iraq has weakened the Anglo-American link. A small majority of Brits supported the Iraq war at the time, but many of them now feel deceived. They blame Blair for being too subservient to Bush. It will, as a result, be far harder for a future prime minister to commit Britain to support U.S. intervention in some future crisis.
It is a fortunate accident that this rising anti-Americanism in Britain has occurred simultaneously with a rising Euro-skepticism. Otherwise, the Brits might have found themselves embracing a common European foreign policy in response to a war that they came to reject. Paradoxically, that result would be quite welcome to Blair, a Euro-federalist, even if it were inspired by anger at his policy. He has taken major steps toward involving the U.K. in a European defense structure separate from NATO. The Tories, who remain the principal Atlanticist party (despite their spat with the White House over the party's perceived inconstancy on Iraq), are firmly opposed to this. And if Blair wins a third term, the U.S. will depend heavily on their continued resistance.
A second cluster of issues that might have been expected to influence the election includes immigration, crime, and the cultural transformation of Britain. Opinion polls show unmistakably that the Blair government is vulnerable on these issues and that Tory policies — for instance, more effective control of immigration — have overwhelming popular support. Events have come to the Tories' aid as well: The case of an Algerian terrorist who killed a policeman after twice escaping deportation seems to support the Tory claims that crime is rising and the immigration system is in chaos. Even the media have helped by treating the Tory policies as "controversial" and thus keeping them, rather than health and education, on the front page.
Some Tories are despondent because none of this has produced much movement in the polls. If anything, there has been a slight movement toward Labour. Such a reaction is premature: Polls may not tell the full story, especially on issues such as crime and immigration. First of all, where the media and other cultural institutions all send out the message that support for immigration control is "racist" or "nativist," respondents are likely to keep their opinions to themselves. In recent elections, moreover, the Tories have significantly outperformed the polls. Second, the populist Tory pitch for "more police" or "controlled immigration" runs up against the fact that in recent years traditional institutions have been colonized by political correctness. "More police" was a better slogan when the police were tough on criminals and respectful to the middle class. Today, it sometimes seems as if the cops have reversed those attitudes. So the Tories have to persuade the voters that they really mean it — that they will embark on a much broader reform program of restoring common sense to the public sector rather than simply hiring more "police community coordination officers."
Such a broad reform program, however, would require serious intellectual investment in both shaping new policies and transmitting them to the voters — and not just on crime, immigration, and cultural change. What has handicapped the Tories is not the vigorous populist campaign they have been waging in recent weeks — that's the Left's self-serving analysis — but their timidity over policy formation in the last eight years.
On the central election issues of the economy and public spending, their policy has been scarcely distinguishable from Labour's. Both promise a sustained rise in public spending and either no tax cuts at all (Labour) or minuscule ones (the Tories). As a result, the Tories have disappointed their own supporters, given the public too restricted a choice, and ratified New Labour's shift of resources from the private to the public sector. In the words of a Sunday Business editorial, the British people are "sleepwalking to social democracy."
Despite the present somnolent prosperity of London, all the figures point to future economic difficulties. In particular there is a significantly increased weight of government on the society. Public employment, public spending, and the burden of public regulation are all rising sharply. The overall share of GDP taken by government has risen from 37.5 percent in 1997 to 42.5 percent today. And Britain's competitiveness in the world economy has fallen from a ranking of ninth in 1997 to 17th today. In other words the Thatcherite "exceptionalism" that has recently distinguished the British economy from the failing social-democratic countries of Europe is gradually being eroded by New Labour.
If the Tories can alert the British people to this by May 5, they may yet derail Tony Blair's coronation. But the hour is very late.
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