“AS EVER,” said the Prime Minister, with an endearing, crooked grin, “a lot of it is about me.” And with that queeny affirmation he began a riff about how he sees his “relationship” with the country. The nature of this relationship, it became numbingly clear, is not seen by our PM as a formal, professional thing, like one’s relationship with a dentist or business partner.
Dear me, no. It is hotter than that. It is all about “warmth” and “euphoria” followed by romantic disillusion, “the thousand little things that irritate and grate . . . and before you know it you raise your voice. I raise mine. Some of you throw a bit of crockery. And now you have to sit down and decide whether you want the relationship to continue.” We could, he coyly says, go off with Mr Howard. But he — gulp! — he hopes not. He believes in us. “I’m back, and it feels good.” He’s listened. He respects us. He’s sorry. He is “older, a little wiser”. He promises not to be arrogant, or away so much.
Now, the metaphor of marriage is not a new one. Political commentators talk about “honeymoon periods” and “wooing the electorate”. But it is unusual to hear a prime minister coming on so strong, so explicit, so desirous of living in an Aga Saga. It may be that the speech was a calculated assault on the female vote: he reckons he can get us by sounding like Hugh Grant delivering a Richard Curtis script, with the electorate looking vulnerable in a furry hood and snow falling softly in the background. He thinks that emotion will keep us safe from the heartless rough wooing of Mr Howard. He thinks this is personal.
I have news for him. We really don’t want a lover, or a penitent husband: got those at home, thanks. We do not wish to be swept along on clouds of euphoria. May 1997 was fun, with a fresh young Blair bouncing and waving rhetorical flares like Ellen MacArthur, but that was mostly relief, not romance. Equally, if we are now throwing crockery it is not just because of “the thousand little things that irritate and grate”. It is not about the plum velour tracksuit or Carole Caplin or even the freebie holidays. It is about serious things, and we cannot be bought off with a halting speech and a box of violet creams..
We did not vote for a demon lover. We were looking for a professional, effective, honest employee. If Mr Blair wants a domestic metaphor, he would do better to think of himself as the handyman or the doctor. We employ government to do things that individuals cannot do: to co-ordinate and deploy common resources, to make systems and services work, to defend us against crime and war, to curb the tyranny of the strong and protect the weak. In some areas — health, education, care of the poorest children — there is some progress. But it is patchy and uncertain, marred by self-replicating bureaucracy and a mistrustful inspection-and-target culture which chokes the things it is supposed to support. The economy is reasonably healthy, though how far Mr Blair himself can claim credit is moot.
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But if missiles are flying and rolling-pins swinging, there is good reason. We should not be insulted by the implication that shrugs and smiles will make everything lovely. His administration has wasted a great deal of public money, not least on government consultants, political advisers and unprecedentedly vainglorious entertaining. It has emasculated the impartial Civil Service and brought down honest men. It tinkers amateurishly, dismantling the House of Lords and only half rebuilding it, and fiddles helplessly with the legal structures surrounding the Lord Chancellor (who appears unsure whether he exists or not, with only one leg in the silk stockings).
Some money has been creatively spent — working families’ tax credit, education maintenance allowance — but much has poured into initiatives that later get scrapped. Witness the Dome, the rise and forthcoming fall of the “Connexions” system for young people, or the programmes that fail to reduce school truancy. Government specialises in chasing soft targets, though: so when it boasts of having increased school attendance it does not mean that hard-core truants are returning. It just means that good parents have been frightened, by threats of exclusion, out of removing even the youngest children for term-time travel.
New Labour wasted aeons of parliamentary time on a piffling, malicious class war against hunting, resulting in an unenforceable law that dismays rural police forces. It made an expensive pig’s ear of the foot-and-mouth crisis. It has not faced up to the underfunding of universities (on higher education we spend only half the proportion of GDP that other developed countries do), yet it persecutes the great universities with ill-informed bullying.
Mr Blair led us into war against Iraq with dubious legality, saying explicitly that the aim was not “regime change” but defence against Saddam’s weapons; having exaggerated these, he now pretends that they were never the point anyway. His cohorts shamefully bullied the BBC. He has failed to control the borders and presides over a shambolic Home Office, yet is willing to imprison without trial or charge. Railways and public transport remain embarrassing. The Blair years have seen a growing culture of lawless late-night drunkenness in even the smallest towns.
So we throw crockery. The “passion” Mr Blair invokes is irrelevant: it may be enjoyable for him, but the electorate prefers things that work. The PM’s crime is not, as he implies, not being loving enough. It is incompetence.
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But if he really wants to make this into a marital tiff, I might mention that another thing which gets us wives reaching for the heaviest milk-jug is the perception that our man puts his awful mates before his family. Peter Mandelson, who can’t even speak French properly, sits overpaid in Brussels and utters sneery threats against the BBC. Alastair Campbell, arrogant foul-mouthed bully and dossier-doctorer, is back in the fold. Disgraced David Blunkett hangs on to his free house. Where’s that rolling-pin?
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