Blair Backs Cameron Plan, Slams `Strange' Brown for Failings
Tony Blair, former U.K. prime minister
Ahikam Seri/Bloomberg News
Tony Blair, former U.K. prime minister.
Tony Blair, former U.K. prime minister. Photographer: Ahikam Seri/Bloomberg News
Blair Backs Cameron Program, Slams ‘Strange’ Brown
Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
A customer picks up a copy of a book titled "A Journey" by former U.K. prime minister Tony Blair at a book store in London.
A customer picks up a copy of a book titled "A Journey" by former U.K. prime minister Tony Blair at a book store in London. Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
Tony Blair, Britain’s longest- serving Labour prime minister, endorsed Conservative David Cameron’s economic policy and slammed Gordon Brown, his partner in power for a decade, for political incompetence.
In his memoir “A Journey,” published by Random House today, Blair said Britain “elected a Tory version of New Labour” in May with a coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. He said Cameron’s policies are close to his own vision of using market forces to improve public services, ideas rejected by Brown, who led the Labour Party to defeat in May after forcing Blair out in 2007.
“If governments don’t tackle deficits, the bill is footed by taxpayers, who fear that big deficits mean big taxes, both of which reduce confidence, investment and purchasing power,” Blair wrote.
The 736-page book recounted Blair’s 27-year relationship with Brown, initially comparing them to lovers, then a married couple, and then bitter rivals. Blair praised Brown’s efforts to stave off the 2008 banking collapse, then criticized him for driving up government debt.
“I had a feeling that my going and being succeeded by Gordon was also terminal for the government,” Blair wrote. “I discovered there was a lacuna -- not the wrong instinct, but no instinct at the human, gut level. Political calculation, yes. Political feelings, no. Analytical intelligence, absolutely. Emotional intelligence, zero. Gordon is a strange guy.”
Bank Independence
In the memoir, Blair claimed credit for management of the economy, saying the 1997 move to give the Bank of England independence by granting it the power to set monetary policy was his idea, not Brown’s. The two men oversaw Britain’s longest period of uninterrupted growth.
The former premier, 57, defended his 2003 decision to invade Iraq, while describing how he wept as he talked to a soldier’s widow. He also recounted sabotaging a ban on fox hunting, one of the most controversial laws of his premiership.
Blair will donate the proceeds of the book, including his advance, reported to be 4.6 million pounds ($7.1 million) by British media, to a charity for wounded soldiers.
In the final chapter, Blair turned to U.K. politics today. While praising Brown’s actions to recapitalize banks, he attacked the rest of his response to the global financial crisis.
Brown “bought completely the Keynesian ‘state is back in fashion’ thesis,” Blair wrote. Support crumbled in the election because “we had become the old Labour Party.”
Blair’s suggested alternative, including an increase in value-added tax, is along the lines adopted by the coalition.
‘Close the Deficit’
“We should have taken a New Labour way out of the economic crisis: kept direct taxes competitive, had a gradual rise in VAT and other indirect taxes to close the deficit, and used the crisis to push further and faster on reform,” he said. “What the public ended up doing, in that remarkable way they have, is electing the government they wanted.”
Blair devoted much of the book to Brown, 59. The two were friends and allies when first elected to Parliament in 1983 -- “as close as two people ever are in politics,” Blair wrote, comparing them to “lovers desperate to get to lovemaking.”
They fell out over who should succeed John Smith as Labour leader in 1994. Blair, who had urged Brown to challenge Smith two years earlier, said he had a premonition the weekend before Smith died and told his wife Cherie.
“I remember waking up,” Blair wrote. “I said to her: ‘If John dies, I will be leader, not Gordon. And somehow, I think this will happen.’”
Deal Sealed
Blair said he and Brown held a “tortuous” series of meetings after which Brown agreed not to stand in his way. “We were like a couple who loved each other, arguing whose career should come first,” Blair wrote.
There was no mention of the Granita restaurant in north London, portrayed as the venue where the accord was sealed in a 2003 Channel 4 television drama, “The Deal.”
Blair denied there was any formal agreement that Brown would stand aside in 1994 in return for support for him to take over later, saying only there was an “understanding.”
Even before Labour came to power in 1997, though, Blair decided Brown was unsuited for the top job.
“It is only in government that the character to lead is clear or not,” he said. “Foibles in opposition become disabilities in government; weaknesses become terminal; things that can be glossed over remain like irremovable stains.”
The pair disagreed about taxation and spending and how to improve health care and education. Blair wanted to open them up to competition. Brown, Blair said, wanted to block anything that might make it difficult for him to win an election after he took over.
To get Brown to call off a rebellion among Labour lawmakers, Blair pledged in 2003 that he would step aside the following year if Brown would continue his program. Blair later concluded that this wouldn’t happen.
“He would say: I received an assurance Tony would go,” Blair said. “I would say: I received an assurance Gordon would cooperate and carry through the agenda. You can then debate who kept his word.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Robert Hutton in London at rhutton1@bloomberg.net.
Rate These Stories
Rate this Page