Black Mass: How Religion Led the World into Crisis (16 page)

Neo-conservatism is not the most recent variety of conservatism. It is a new type of politics that can emerge at any point on the political spectrum. In Britain, neo-conservatism’s political vehicle was not the Conservative party but the new party that Blair created when he seized the Labour leadership.

The single most important fact in Blair’s rise to power was Thatcher’s new settlement. Both in economic and political terms it was an established fact, but while this was an index of Thatcher’s achievement it was also a source of weakness for the Conservatives. Thatcher often declared that she aimed to destroy socialism in Britain. She never paused to consider what would be the effect on her party if she succeeded. For much of the twentieth century the Conservatives acted as a brake on collectivism. The Conservative party existed to oppose not just socialism but also – and more relevantly – any further advance towards social democracy. By dismantling the Labour settlement
Thatcher removed the chief reason for the existence of the Conservative party. Without a clearly defined enemy it lacked an identity. Labour had never been a doctrinaire socialist party – as Labour prime minister Harold Wilson remarked, it had always owed more to Methodism than to Marx – but by identifying New Labour with the market, Blair was able to deprive the Conservatives of the threat that had defined them for generations. As a result they were mired in confusion for nearly a decade.

While Blair’s embrace of neo-liberal economic policies was a strategic decision, it soon acquired an ideological rationale. More conventional in his thinking about domestic issues than most politicians and having an even shorter historical memory, Blair embraced without question the neo-liberal belief that only one economic system can deliver prosperity in a late modern context. Modernization became the Blairite mantra, and for Blair it meant something precise: the reorganization of society around the imperatives of the free market. When he was still in opposition Blair curried support from disillusioned Conservatives by representing himself as a One Nation Tory – a progressive conservative who accepted the central role of the market but also understood the importance of social cohesion. Once in power it was clear Blair came not to bury Thatcher but to continue her work.

Blair’s One Nation Toryism was like his fabled Third Way, a political marketing tool. The Third Way originated in Bill Clinton’s practice of ‘triangulation’ – a tactic invented in the mid–1990s by Clinton’s advisor Dick Morris, which involved Clinton setting himself up as a more pragmatic alternative to both parties in Congress. Adopting the same tactic Blair attacked his own party as much as the Conservatives. His successful campaign to remove Clause Four (which mandated common ownership of the means of production) from the Labour constitution in 1995 was a symbolic act rather than a policy shift. At the same time it was a marker for larger challenges to Labour’s social-democratic inheritance. Blair carried on the agenda of privatization that had developed from Thatcher’s original programme into core areas of the state such as sections of the justice system and prison service, and inserted market mechanisms into the NHS and the schooling system.

In these respects Blair did no more than consolidate Thatcherism. He did not change British society in the way Thatcher did. His chief impact has been on his own party. New Labour was constructed to bury the past and in this if in nothing else it succeeded. It began as a coup masterminded by a handful of people – Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson, Alistair Campbell, Philip Gould and others – who aimed to rebuild the party as an instrument for securing power. New Labour was a purpose-built construction with few links to the political tradition that preceded it. If it displayed any continuity with the past it was with the Social Democratic party that had split from Labour in the eighties, but unlike the Social Democrats New Labour grasped that issues of strategy and organization are more important than questions of policy. New Labour’s first priority was to restructure the party as a centralized institution. Power had to be concentrated before anything else could be done. New Labour always had a Leninist aspect, but it was a Leninism that focused on reshaping the image of the party. If New Labour was ‘modern’ in its acceptance of the free market it was ‘post-modern’ in its conviction that power is exercised by changing the way society is perceived.

Blair’s most prominent talents were his skill in using the techniques of public relations and his sensitivity to the public mood. These traits have led some observers to the view that he is an opportunist with no underlying convictions. It is true there has never been anything like a Blairite ideology, but that does not mean Blair has no beliefs. His career in politics is testimony to the power of neo-conservative ideas, which guided his most fateful decisions. Blair was a neo-liberal by default, but a neo-conservative by conviction.
¹⁸

Neo-conservatism diverges from neo-liberalism at crucial points, and it is specifically neo-conservative beliefs that shaped Blair’s view of the world. Unlike neo-liberals, neo-conservatives do not aim to return to an imaginary era of minimum government. They perceive that the social effects of free markets are not all benign and look to government to promote the virtues the free market neglects. Blair has always been a strong advocate of ‘law and order’, and made this a theme when he served as shadow home secretary under Labour leader John Smith. In part this was a strategic move to wrest the territory from the Conservatives, but it also matched his instincts.
Neo-conservatives may not always be admirers of Victorian values –some (including Blair) have seen themselves as having liberal views on personal morality – but they reject the view that the state can be morally neutral. Government must act to promote the good life, which involves accepting the need for discipline and punishment. It also means promoting religion. Unlike neo-liberals, who are usually secular in outlook, neo-conservatives view religion as a vital source of social cohesion – a view expressed in Blair’s support for faith schools.

Above all, neo-conservatives are unwilling to rely on social evolution. Commonly more intelligent than neo-liberals, they understand that while capitalism is a revolutionary force that overturns established social structures and topples regimes this does not happen by itself – state power and sometimes military force are needed to expedite the process. In its enthusiasm for revolutionary change, neo-conservatism has more in common with Jacobinism and Leninism than with neo-liberalism or traditional conservatism. The common view of Blair as a crypto-Tory could not be more mistaken. There is no trace in him of the scepticism about progress voiced by Tories such as Disraeli. Nor is he simply another neo-liberal prophet of the free market. He is an American neo-conservative and has been throughout most of his political life.

It is in international relations that neo-conservatism shaped Blair most deeply. Whatever he may have wished his inheritance to be –British entry into the single European currency, perhaps – he will be remembered for taking the UK into a ruinous war. His part in the Iraq war destroyed him as a politician, and he cannot have wanted this result. It would be a mistake to imagine that he was as committed at the beginning of this ill-conceived venture as he later came to be; he made errors of judgement at every stage. At the same time his support for the war expressed his most basic beliefs.

From one point of view it was a misjudged exercise in
realpolitik.
Like other British prime ministers Blair feared the consequence of opposing US policies and was prey to the conceit that by being America’s unswerving ally Britain could help shape its behaviour in the international system. Anthony Eden’s attempt to topple Egyptian president Nasser and reassert British control of the Suez Canal in
1956 destroyed his political career and underlined the risks of any British leader opposing American power. Later prime ministers successfully distanced themselves from American policies – most notably Harold Wilson, who wisely declined to send troops to support the Americans in Vietnam – but Blair was insistent that Britain must give the US full support. He feared the impact on the international system if the US acted alone and saw an opportunity for Britain to ‘punch above its weight’ by acting as the bridge between America and Europe.

In fact, the war left the transatlantic divide wider than at any time since the Second World War, with British opinion alienated from the US, and Britain at the same time more at odds with Europe even than in Thatcher’s time. But it was not only a misguided attempt at higher strategy, and there can be no doubt that Bush’s decision to overthrow Saddam chimed with Blair’s convictions. Saddam was a tyrant who represented a stage in human history whose time had passed. A new international order was under construction with America in the lead, and Blair wanted to be at the forefront of this project. As John Kampfner has written, ‘Blair was not dragged into war with Iraq. He was at ease with himself and his own beliefs.’
¹⁹

What were those beliefs? In a span of six years Blair took Britain into war five times. He sanctioned air strikes against Saddam Hussein in 1998, the Kosovo war in 1999, British military intervention in Sierra Leone in 2000, the war in Afghanistan in 2002 and Iraq in 2003. He dispatched further contingents of British troops to Afghanistan in 2006 when US forces were run down in the country. There is a strong strand of continuity in these decisions. Blair believes in the power of force to ensure the triumph of the good. From this point of view the attack on Iraq was a continuation of policies in the Balkans and Afghanistan. In each case war was justified as a form of humanitarian intervention. This may have had some force in the Balkans and Sierra Leone. It was dubious in Afghanistan and duplicitous in Iraq.

Blair justified these military involvements in terms of a ‘doctrine of international community’, which he presented in a speech at the Economic Club in Chicago in 1999. Blair’s new doctrine rested on the belief that state sovereignty could no longer survive in an interdependent world:

We are witnessing the beginnings of a new doctrine of international community. By this I mean the explicit recognition that today more than ever before we are mutually dependent, that national interest is to a significant extent governed by international collaboration and that we need a clear and coherent debate as to the direction the doctrine takes us in each field of international endeavour. Just as within domestic politics, the notion of community – the belief that partnership and cooperation are essential to advance self-interest – is coming into its own; so it needs to find its own international echo.
²⁰

Blair’s speech reflects the unreal intellectual climate of the time. In the nineties it was fashionable to maintain that the world had moved into a ‘post-Westphalian’ era – so called after the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, which is often seen as marking the point at which the modern state was recognized in law. This system had ended in the post-Cold War period, it was believed: state sovereignty was no longer at the centre of the international system, which was governed by global institutions. In fact the sovereign state was as strong as it had ever been, and its seeming decline was a by-product of the interval after the end of the Cold War in which the US seemed able to act without restraint from other powers. The interval was destined to be brief. China and India were emerging as great powers whose interests diverge at important points but which are at one in rejecting any system based on American hegemony. In the nineties as in the past several great powers were interacting in a mix of rivalry and cooperation. In many ways this was a re-run of the late nineteenth century with different players.

The idea that the sovereign state is on the way out was nonsense, but it served Blair well. In the first place it matched his view of the world in which human development is seen as a series of stages, each better than the last. This is a Whiggish variant of the belief in providence to which Blair subscribed as part of his Christian world-view. It would be unwise to take too seriously Blair’s claim to have been inspired by the Quaker philosopher John Macmurray (1891–1976) – a Christian communitarian thinker who developed from the British Idealist tradition and argued for a positive understanding of freedom as a part of the common good. To a greater extent than
most politicians, Blair’s view of the world was formed by the conventional beliefs of the day. He never doubted that globalization was creating a worldwide market economy that must eventually be complemented by global democracy. When he talked of the necessity for continuing ‘economic reform’ – as he often did – he took for granted this meant further privatization and the injection of market mechanisms into public services. The incessant ‘modernization’ he demanded was, in effect, an ossified version of the ideas of the late eighties. Like Thatcher – with whom he has very little else in common – Blair lacked scepticism. For him the clichés of the hour have always been eternal verities.

As with George W. Bush, however, there is no reason to doubt the reality of Blair’s faith. Like Bush, Blair thinks of international relations in terms derived from theology. To be sure this is not the theology of Augustine or Aquinas. It failed to persuade Pope John Paul II when Blair had an audience with him in late February 2003. Medieval Christian thinkers developed a rigorous theory of the conditions that must be satisfied before a war can be considered just, and the pontiff rightly believed they had not been met. The audience must have pained Blair, but it failed to shake his sense of rectitude. It was enough that he felt he was right. The scrupulous casuistry of medieval thinkers regarding the consequences of human action was of no interest. Good intentions are what matter and they are bound in the end to prevail. And yet these same ‘good intentions’ were promoted through ill-conceived and ideologically motivated policies, whose distance from any prudent assessment of facts he seemed unable to perceive.