New Labour Lives On

These are tough times for the British Labour Party. It faces almost certain defeat in the next election, which must be held by June 3. Its widely mocked leader, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, has been unable to turn around his or the party's unpopularity. Brown's predecessor, Tony Blair—recently considered a shoo-in to become the EU Council's first president—has seen his chances fade as the big guns on the continent have refused to back him. If that doesn't bury Blair's bid, the controversy that still surrounds him—a legacy of his support for the Iraq War and his new, highly lucrative speaking career—might.

Yet the Blair-Brown saga is not quite as bleak as it seems, and it would be wrong to confuse Labour's temporary woes with the long-term fate of its leaders or their legacy. Even if the party loses the next election, their New Labour project, which was the key to its phenomenal electoral success for more than a decade, will survive. When Brown and Blair finally exit the scene, it is their reformist torchbearers, not Labour's marginalized left wing, who will take over.

Indeed, one often hears the refrain "New Labour is in our DNA" from the bedraggled troops now marching off to fight the next battle. That's because the core of M.P.s who will take Labour into the next decade is composed of Blair-Brown contemporaries; bright, still-youngish things who studied at the duo's feet; and early skeptics who were won over by the Blair-Brown machine's winning electoral strategy. Labour won three elections in a row under their leadership—something it had never done before—and the party's new powers will be keen to recapture the magic.

Two major New Labour figures will be especially instrumental in shaping the party's future. One is Foreign Secretary David Miliband, 44. Miliband is a Blairite "ultra" who, though he mounted a couple of lame challenges to Brown for the party leadership in recent years, eventually pledged him his loyalty. With Blair seemingly out of the running for Europe's president, Miliband has become a favorite to take on the key roles of vice president of the European Commission and high representative for foreign affairs and security. Such a job would season him for an eventual return to Britain and a strong leadership bid. In the meantime, he, along with like-minded allies such as his younger brother Ed, 39, secretary of state for energy and climate change, and Ed Balls, 42, secretary of state for children, schools, and families, are setting the course for the party's future. The centrists, having successfully rebuffed efforts to pull the party back to the left, want to keep government strong and taxes high enough to maintain a generous welfare state, but they aim to balance that against the need to promote entrepreneurship, attract investment, and tame the once mighty unions.

Helping them out will be one other key New Labour heavyweight: the 56-year-old former Blair strategist and M.P. Peter Mandelson, now Lord Mandelson, whose responsibilities are so vast and titles so long that he's currently known as the minister for everything. Blair, Brown, and Mandelson once formed a triumvirate that, starting in the early 1990s, transformed Labour from an old-line socialist party into a business-friendly force that dominated the center. Mandelson and Brown became bitter enemies early on when Mandelson backed Blair's bid for party leadership. But Mandelson rescued his relationship with the P.M. last autumn, when he gave up his job as EU trade commissioner to return to London as Brown's business czar amid the financial crisis. Mandelson was the only party heavyweight who could end the ceaseless plotting against Brown and, in the process, rescue Labour from its corrosive infighting. His strong show of support during Brown's direst hour, after Labour performed abysmally in local elections last spring, kept a party revolt from spinning out of control.

Blair and Brown seem destined to soon leave the party behind and go their separate ways. Brown may one day head to the World Bank or International Monetary Fund, where he has won respect as an economic manager, and Blair will focus on his lucrative mini-empire of private, public, and charitable works. Both men are still in their 50s, so it's far too soon to write either's political epitaph. But its content already seems clear, for their great work—one of postwar Europe's most masterful party makeovers—seems set to survive them, and even thrive again one day.