Peter Mandelson: Don't let Labour sink back into its old instincts

Politics

The Legacy: Tony Blair, Prime Minister, 1997-2007

I hope Gordon Brown feels like a man liberated to develop his own philosophy

Friday, May 11, 2007

People ask how much Tony Blair has achieved: I say he's changed the political weather. Before Tony Blair became Labour leader, the legacy of Thatcherism reigned supreme. People thought that government had to be " cruel to be efficient".

The Tories warned in the 1997 election that "you can't have a minimum wage because it will cost two million jobs". Similarly the whole Tory argument in 1997 was based on the proposition that "much as we might want new hospitals and schools, shorter hospital waiting lists and less overcrowded classrooms, we can't have them because there's no way the nation can afford it - and any way the top priority before anything else must be tax cuts".

The British people never liked this much. It wasn't in keeping with their fundamental sense of fairness, but they didn't trust Labour to combine governing competence with social concern. People feared a Labour government would mean a loss of control of public finances, strikes settled by beer and sandwiches at No 10, and a run on the pound. And they had good grounds because every previous Labour government had fallen into one or all of those traps.

Tony Blair has transformed Labour into the natural party of government, not by sacrificing principle and becoming, as his critics on the left would say, just like the Tories, but by using power responsibly to promote Labour's social democratic ends.

There are still problems with public services, but no one can doubt the scale of new investment, the mushrooming of new school and hospital buildings, the growth in numbers of teachers, doctors and nurses and the improved responsiveness of services to individual need.

Far fewer people are living in poverty: not just 700,000 children, but a lower proportion of pensioners than the population as a whole - a first in the whole post-war period. And working families as a whole have a far better deal when it comes to parental leave and childcare.

Tony Blair has made Britain into a modern European social democratic country. In 2007 political debate is not about whether we can afford an NHS, but who can run it best. It's not about reducing the size of the state as a matter of ideological choice, but how to promote more social responsibility and how to help families to cope with the stresses of working life.

To smart people in the London elites, whose daily contact with these fundamentals is marginal, these achievements may seem trifling. For many of them nothing matters by comparison with Iraq. They ignore, of course, the other achievements of Tony Blair's commitment to international engagement - successful humanitarian intervention in Sierra Leone and Kosovo, aid for Africa and climate change. But Blair's domestic achievement in restoring and modernising the British welfare state will prove more significant in the long-term judgement of history.

The interesting question for British politics is whether Blairism will continue to be the ideological reference point for Labour as Thatcherism is, nearly two decades on, for the Conservatives. Will Labour remain "New Labour" at heart? The culture of the party has changed a good deal. But the temptation will always be there to go back to the old ways of putting the party first and the public second - of talking to ourselves when we should be listening to others - with the result that the party will end up losing.

The biggest question for Labour's future will be whether the default position is to take or avoid risks; whether the politically correct will prevail over what is harder to sell to the party; and whether the New Labour reforms will be built upon with fresh vigour.

Much of British politics has been reported through the narrow prism of Blair-Brown rivalries. From yesterday that is history. Gordon Brown will assume the Labour leadership from a position of unprecedented strength. There may or may not be a candidate from the old left. If there is, it will be a welcome opportunity for the party to demonstrate its determination to stick with New Labour. Gordon Brown can count on the full loyalty of all of Tony Blair's most ardent admirers in sticking to that course.

Of course, Gordon is entitled to develop his philosophy and policy in his own way. I hope he now feels like a man liberated to do this. He should be different in style from Blair - he can afford to be - but in his political approach we should give him every backing in ensuring that Labour does not sink back into the old introspection, the old business of listening to the party and not the voters, and the knee-jerk instincts of the old left.

New Labour is Tony Blair's legacy but it should also be Gordon Brown's.

The writer is EU Trade Commissioner and a former cabinet minister