LONDON—Americans may be puzzled why Tony Blair is on the political defensive back home, given that he is probably the most popular politician in America. They might understand better if they were following an issue most Americans have never heard of, whether Britain should ratify the European Constitution drawn up under the leadership of former (1974–81) French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing.
advertisement
Browse through an archive of columns by Michael Barone.
That controversy came to the fore on Tuesday, April 20, when Blair stepped forward in the House of Commons and reversed himself on whether there should be a referendum on the EU Constititution. Last October, he told the Labour Party conference that he was determined that there would be no referendum. On Tuesday, he promised that there would be a referendum—though he did not say just when.
Referenda are rare in Britain but not unheard of. The New Labour government sponsored referenda on the issues of whether there should be separate Scottish and Welsh governments; the proposals passed, the latter by a narrow margin. Back in 1975, Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath held a referendum on whether Britain should join the Common Market. Polls had shown the EU losing. But Heath, Labour Party leader (and former and future Prime Minister) Harold Wilson and leading business interests put on a strong television campaign, turning opinion around, and British voters chose to enter the EU.
In the 1997 and 2001 elections, New Labour promised that it would not join the euro, the EU currency, without a referendum. Blair effectively put the issue of whether a referendum should be held in the hands of his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown. Brown established five economic tests—whether the British business cycle was in sync with the continental business cycle and the like—which he said must be met before he would support a referendum. Last year, he said the five tests were not met. No one here in London thinks he will say anything else this year. Polls have shown about 60 percent of British voters against the euro. Blair seems unlikely to want to expend the political capital to build support for the euro in the 12-month period before the next general election, which he is likely to call in May or June 2005 (the last election was in June 2001, and for a British prime minister to fail to call a general election until the fifth year of his government's term is considered a sign of dangerous weakness).
Blair does not seem likely to call a referendum on the EU Constitution before the next general election either. The final drafts of a constitution have not been agreed to, he pointed out in Parliament on Tuesday, and are not likely to be until next October or November—nothing gets done in Europe during those long summer vacation months—and then, he argued, the British Parliament should scrutinize it before the issue goes to the voters. Conservative Party leader Michael Howard argued that the Scottish and Welsh referenda had gone to voters there before Parliament acted. But, Blair replied, Howard, as part of the Conservative government, had opposed any referendum on the EU Maastricht Treaty in 1992.
Blair's switch gets him out of some short-term political trouble. Conservatives had been loudly demanding a referendum, and now Labour can say—as it said in 1997 and 2001 about the euro—that a Labour government will not adopt the EU Constitution without a vote of the people. So the issue becomes less important in the next general election. But Blair also pays something of a political price. His switch could damage further his reputation for honesty and candor. In 1997, when New Labour won by a wide margin, that reputation was very high indeed. It was somewhat lower in 2001, but New Labour won again by an almost identical margin. It has been hurt further since by the controversy, sparked last summer by the suicide of weapons inspection expert David Kelly, over the accuracy of Blair's case for military action against Iraq. Unfairly so, I would argue; and the Hutton Commission, examining the charges against Blair, exonerated him completely. But polls showed the voters rejected the Hutton conclusion. The damage is there, not least because the left-wing BBC savages Blair any chance it gets.
In the tradition of acerbically adversarial parliamentary debate, Michael Howard made that point on Tuesday. "I begin by welcoming the fact that the prime minister has, at long last, seen sense and decided to give the British people their say on a question of such fundamental importance, even though he could not bring himself to utter the word ‘referendum' in his statement this afternoon. Six months ago, the prime minister stood before his party conference and said, with all the lip-quivering intensity for which he has become famous: ‘I can only go one way. I've never got a reverse gear.' Today, we could hear the gears grinding as he came before us, lip quivering once again, to eat all those words that he has pronounced so emphatically for so long. Who will ever trust him again?"
Well, most Americans and George W. Bush will trust him to keep his word in the war on terrorism as he did, despite ferocious opposition, on military action against Iraq. But that support will not help him much among British voters, many of whom distrust America and most of whom loathe Bush—including even many Conservative voters and politicians. Blair is not likely to be repudiated by his party, and the likelihood is that his Labour Party will win any spring 2005 election, not least because the parliamentary district boundaries heavily disadvantage the Conservatives. But the extraordinary support New Labour has enjoyed from British voters since Blair became party leader in 1994 and up through early 2003 is there no more. We are closer to what has been the ordinary situation since I started following British politics some 40 years ago, when Britons tell pollsters that they disapprove of the government in office and indicate a willingness to vote for the opposition. I see Tony Blair as a world leader of enormous stature and courage. But British voters seem to see him now, as they did not until recent months, as an ordinary political leader.
