The Indomitable Tony Blair

No one looks more like a loser in Britain these days than Tony Blair. Since the Labour Party he once led lost the election last May and turned 10 Downing Street over to a Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition, senior Labour figures have turned their backs on him. The latest and most far-reaching of several inquiries into the circumstances surrounding Britain’s entry into the Iraq War seems certain to question his probity and judgment when it reports around the end of the year. The only bright spot for this fallen idol is his memoir, A Journey, which remains at or near the top of bestseller lists.

But guess who’s buying the book? In a recent interview with The Guardian, Michael Gove, the new education secretary and a leading member of Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron’s brain trust, jumped out of his chair, ran to his desk and grabbed a copy. “I love A Journey,” he gushed. He then recited with admiration a section in which Blair maintains that opposition to public-service reform can be overcome. And Gove is far from alone in his appreciation for the Tory’s old nemesis. Blair’s narrative has become a key part of the Cameron narrative, political philosophy and policy program. Many of Blair’s old reforms that were stymied by his ideological enemies within his own party are now being adopted, adapted, and promoted by the Conservatives.

Needless to say, there are important differences between the modernized Conservative and Labour parties, in particular when it comes to the role and size of the central government. But even Cameron used to refer to himself as the “heir to Blair,” and there’s a distinct Blairite hue to his core program, from giving state schools a measure of autonomy to forcing competition upon hospitals and local medical practices. The same is true in defense: in his final years before leaving office in 2007, Blair’s closeness to America caused him major political problems; still, last week the Tories vowed against great pressure and at great expense to maintain Britain’s nuclear-defense capability, a key pillar of the U.S.-U.K. relationship.

So it was hardly a shock last week at the party conference in Birmingham to see Steve Hilton, one of Cameron’s closest policy advisers, chatting animatedly with Will Hutton, an influential New Labour economic theorist. Hutton has been asked by the new government to head a review of public-sector pay—a critical issue at a time of deep budget cuts. Just as 15 years ago Hutton’s The State We’re In helped to shape New Labour thinking, his new book, Them and Us: Greed and Inequality—Why We Need a Fair Society, is coloring the thinking of Cameron’s inner circle.

Indeed, Blair would have smiled approvingly at many of the policies Tory ministers paraded before the party faithful at the Birmingham conference. Perversely, he may feel less welcome at his own party’s conferences. The extent of Blair’s pariah status in Labour was on full display during Labour’s post-election leadership battle. The main contenders may have owed their political careers to Blair, who led the party to victory in three elections, but they spent much of their time distancing themselves from him. Partly this was because of Iraq and partly because, given Britain’s deficit crisis, they needed to break from a past of which Blair is such a towering symbol. Two brothers, David and Ed Miliband, ended up fighting each other for the prize. David, 45, was foreign secretary under Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, but nonetheless closely tied to Blair, having been an architect of much New Labour thinking. Ed, 40 and arguably to the left of his brother politically, was more closely linked to Brown, for whom he last served as energy and climate-change secretary. “Red Ed” won, and David, declining a shadow cabinet post proffered by his brother, retreated to the parliamentary backbenches.

Cast out by your own party, embraced by your enemy—it’s the story not only of Blair but also of Margaret Thatcher, whose economic reforms found a home in New Labour’s pro-business, union-skeptic agenda. Thatcher, who turned 85 this week, once recalled that, after notifying the queen of her resignation in 1990, she decided to return to her office at 10 Downing Street “to make sure that I’d left nothing and left it tidy.” Then she discovered that her key “had been taken away. So I couldn’t go back in.” Her great consolation was that in some ways, with Blair at No. 10, she had never left. And with Cameron there today, so it is for Blair.

McGuire is a contributing editor at NEWSWEEK and the editor of the London School of Economics Research magazine.