What will Tony Blair do with his big win? - British prime minister

National Catholic Reporter, May 23, 1997 by Margaret Hebblethwaite

New prime minister's view of politics seems rooted in expediency

LONDON -- After Tony Blair, the new prime minister of Britain, gave the Labor Party its best election result in history May 1 with 419 seats to the Conservatives' 165, The Guardian newspaper declared: "This was our Velvet Revolution, and yesterday the population went wild, British-style."

The hot summer sun came out on election day as though the new government would have control of the weather too. Office workers sunbathed in London parks for extended lunch breaks on the morning after, either breathing deeply the fresh air of freedom or stunned by the extent of the Conservative defeat.

The sense of a nation reborn that pervaded the postelection night activities was all the more surprising given the sharp turn to the right that Blair has imposed on the party he now calls New Labor. President Bill Clinton's adviser Robert Reich has warned Blair quite openly against making "our mistake of drifting to the right."

Writing in the London Observer the weekend before the election, Reich gave a sinister, thrice-repeated caution: "Blair, be warned. A victorious move to the center will be hollow unless accompanied by a bold and distinguished vision of how to improve the lives of most working people."

The 43-year-old Blair, it is well known by now, is the most overtly Christian of the main party leaders, yet it was not easy to pick out his Christian principles in the pre-election campaigning. While the churches were pulling in the direction of social justice in a number of preelection papers -- of which the Catholic bishops' plea in "The Common Good and the Catholic Church's Social Teaching" was the most outstanding -- Blair's Labor party was appealing to the most selfish, conservative instincts of the floating voters of what is known as Middle England.

Christian values were not much in evidence in the New Labor posters proclaiming "Young offenders will be punished' and "Income tax rates will not rise." Any love of the poor was called into question by Blair's dismissive remarks about beggars: "We do have to make our streets safe for people.... It is right to be intolerant of people homeless on the streets."

Labor's most memorable television pre-election broadcast featured a bulldog -- a traditional symbol of British patriotism but for many associated with the most snarling and thickheaded form of xenophobia.

Yet Blair is a committed Anglican, and his wife, attorney Cherie Booth, is a Catholic. Blair regularly attends Mass with her and their three young children, the eldest of whom goes to a Catholic school. Indeed, Blair was deterred from receiving Communion when this act of personal conscience leaked into the newspapers. He said he would not do it again.

Blair did not come from a typical Labor background. He was born in 1953 to a lawyer father, Leo Blair, who almost ran for parliament as a Conservative. Young Tony went to public school (which in Britain means, perversely, a private school). His initial choice of profession was the elitist bar, with all its traditionalist paraphernalia of wigs and dinners.

But as a young barrister, Blair gained a place in the chambers of a lawyer, Derry Irvine, whose close friend was the late Labor leader John Smith. He found himself sharing chambers with another Labor supporter, soon to become his wife, Cherie Booth.

Even before Blair became leader he was talking of the need for "changing the membership of the Labor party" -- a party whose commitment to the poor and the working class had always been founded on mass membership and financing from the trade unions. Within three months of his election as party leader he had coined the name New Labor, and began to speak rather slightingly of the party he had joined, now known as Old Labor. He got away with it because the general election was on the way, and after 18 years of Conservative government -- either under Margaret Thatcher or under the weight of her legacy -- Labor was desperate to get back to power at almost any cost.

Blair is not especially forthcoming on the link between his faith and his politics, though he did write a much-publicized article on the subject a year ago in the Conservative Sunday Telegraph. Even then he began by saying: "I can't stand politicians who wear God on their sleeves," and "I do not discuss my religious beliefs unless asked."

But, having been asked, he admitted, "I find prayer a source of solace and I read the gospels. They are compelling texts and a most extraordinary expression of sensitive human values." And he says that "values," rather than class interest, are the key to his political philosophy. "Socialism to me was never about nationalization or the power of the state; not just about economics or politics even. It is a moral purpose to life; a set of values; a belief in society, in cooperation, in achieving together what we are unable to achieve alone."

Blair holds on to the idea of "sin," even if he says the word sounds "old-fashioned," for not everything is socially determined.