Peter Mair presents an argument that is bold and very interesting—above all, because it provides a coherent account of the Blair government’s ‘constitutional’ politics which does, indeed, eliminate the apparent ‘paradox’ at the centre of the Third Way.footnote1 I admire this attempt while not being wholly convinced by it; in part, because it works better as a description of what has happened than as an explanation. There seem to me several problems which have not been and probably cannot be disposed of by Mair’s argument. The first is his major premise: that ‘it hardly seems enough to suggest that Blair and his colleagues don’t know what they’re doing’. But if history teaches us any lessons, one of them is surely that politicians very frequently do not. Mair’s assumption to the contrary is surprising. Thus, for example, his interpretation of the government’s House of Lords reforms—that they are considered attempts to place expertise above faction—may be plausible. But it is, at the moment, no more plausible than one that suggests they are a dog’s breakfast—a combination of existing party caucuses and appointive notables, with a dash of elected figures and a hereditary rump—cooked up by people who really do not know where they are going.
Nor can his account explain why the reforms have stalled, probably indefinitely, precisely at the moment they matter. Hitherto, institutional changes—devolution, new electoral rules, direct election of mayors—have been confined to subordinate or intermediate authorities; whereas if the system of partisan democracy is to be eliminated or modified, as Mair suggests, one would expect reforms at the centre to be crucial to the present government. But clearly they are not. This ‘not knowing where you are going’ is of a piece with New Labour’s general direction. Although the Prime Minister has, for example, repeatedly said that the goal of the government is the ‘modernization’ of Britain, he has been quite unable to say exactly what that is. If we have only a vague sense of what he might mean, that is partly because the Labour Party itself is not agreed on what constitutes modernization. To Blair, it seems to represent a change in personal relationships—democratic and unstuffy social manners, which carry with them a larger imperative. To others, it means an attack upon ‘vested interests’ and economic inertia, in the name of a wholly meritocratic society—a policy not unrelated to Blair’s. To yet others, particularly those who would not repudiate an Old Labour affiliation, it represents a renewed drive for ‘equality’. To a number, it is probably a little bit of everything.
Mair’s account also, it seems to me, overlooks the specific circumstances that largely determined the government’s constitutional programme. Although he is sceptical of the notion that New Labour simply inherited Scottish and Welsh devolution, the new London Assembly, etc., the fact is that they did. The relative autonomy of the Scottish Labour Party; the extent to which an agreed form of Scottish self-government had united all the major local institutions and political parties, except the Conservatives; and outrage at the way Scotland had been treated by an ‘English’ parliament under the Tories, all made Scottish devolution an inescapable commitment for any Labour government. So, too, was the creation of a London Assembly. The abolition of the old Greater London Council by Mrs Thatcher was a pyrrhic victory for her. There was a widespread feeling (shared by some in the Conservative Party) that to deny London, almost uniquely among major cities, a central, elected authority was a mistake—as much on social and economic as political grounds. This was one reason why the Conservatives never seriously opposed its restoration in a new guise. Welsh devolution, perhaps, was avoidable; but the government was under tremendous pressure from the Welsh Labour Party to yield a referendum, nonetheless.