A Weary Public Sinks the Tories

What its leader Tony Blair calls the New Labor Party has swept to an impressive parliamentary victory, ending 18 years of Conservative rule and bringing Britain its youngest prime minister of this century. How much of the Labor landslide was due to a positive response to its program and leadership can be argued. Clearly, there was above all else a palpable public weariness and disgust with a Tory party that had become noisily divided over European Union issues and increasingly weighed down with the sleazy baggage of sexual and financial scandals. Whatever the reason for Labor’s triumph, it can rightly claim to have won a strong mandate to govern for the next five years.

No one expects Labor’s stunning ascendancy to give rise to a political revolution on the order of, say, its victory in 1945, which institutionalized the modern welfare state, or the Conservative triumph of 1979, which brought Margaret Thatcher to power and launched the union-crushing counterrevolution that became known as Thatcherism. Indeed, Labor’s most effective promise this year may simply have been that it would do better than the Tories. Taken at his word, Blair seems committed largely to maintaining the status quo, with some refinements and with newer, sharper eyes steering the ship of state.

What most notably makes Labor “new” is that the party has left most of its socialist ideology by the wayside and unblushingly adopted much of the Conservative program. Not unlike Bill Clinton’s efforts to reorient the Democratic Party, Blair has maneuvered since becoming party leader in 1994 to drag Labor to the political center. And there, if he has his way, it will remain.

Blair says he will not try to renationalize British Airways or the rail, telephone or utility systems, all of which the Conservatives privatized. He says he will stick to the Tories’ spending ceiling for at least the next few years, and will not seek to raise taxes. He promises to be tough on crime and more forcefully supportive of education, the national health system and improved pensions. He has even spoken admiringly of Thatcher and what she accomplished.

On the question of Britain’s relations with Europe, Blair has been nonrigid and cautious. All this projects an image of unexceptional middle-of-the-roadism, and Britons seem comfortable with it.

After its long exile in the political wilderness, a revivified Labor Party is back in power. Now it must show that it can govern. Britain today has a healthy economy and unemployment that is low by European standards. It also has Irish terrorist bombers, growing class and ethnic tensions and frictions with its European partners. Blair’s task is to mobilize the ideas and the energy to meet these challenges.