Bagehot. The shadow over Tony Blair

Date: 20/03/04

The Madrid bombings have shaken British politics

THE juxtaposition could hardly be sharper. On one side, a prosperous, stable economy and a chancellor brimming with confidence and certainty. On the other, profound insecurity, a growing sense of dread and a prime minister full of foreboding about a threat both “real and existential”.

In normal times, a budget intended to set the agenda for the next election would be a political event of the greatest importance. Gordon Brown's long stint at the Treasury has not been without fault, nor has he made the economy quite as immune from future shocks as he boasted when delivering his budget on March 17th. He also continues to be a good deal more optimistic about future tax revenues and a virtuous rebalancing of the economy away from consumption than most commentators are. But for all that, Mr Brown's success is the most solid achievement to which the government can lay claim. He has delivered growth that has not only been uninterrupted over the course of two parliaments, but has also been at a higher rate than in other big European countries. The question of whether he did that by luck or design is unlikely to trouble most voters.

He has also achieved something matched by no other Labour chancellor: the funding of a large and sustained increase in spending without triggering a crisis in the public finances. Again, he can be criticised for the way he has gone about things, in particular his stubborn determination to pour huge sums of money into the sickly, capacity-constrained health service before the patient could fully absorb the medicine. But despite the waste and the scepticism it has bred, there is mounting evidence that the public services people care about most are slowly improving. And finally, Mr Brown has been a stealthy but effective champion of the poor.

The chancellor's huge self-satisfaction may not be entirely attractive, but it is understandable. He believes he has established an economic platform from which it is almost unthinkable that Labour will lose the next election. But these are not normal times and, after the appalling events in Spain, thinking the hitherto unthinkable suddenly seems quite a reasonable thing to do.

Ministers have, of course, been quick to explain why the bombings and the electoral earthquake which followed have changed nothing here. A few people may be less inclined than before to scoff at Tony Blair's apocalyptic warnings, repeated only a fortnight ago in a passionate defence by the prime minister of his policy on global terrorism. Far from being tormented by demons of his own imagining, as some had jeered, Mr Blair has been vindicated, albeit in a ghastly way.

Many Spanish voters seem to have concluded that the decision to go to war in Iraq had made America's coalition partners more vulnerable to attack. This, say ministers, misses the point. The September 11th hijackers didn't need the Iraq war as a pretext. Besides, Britain, because of what it represents, has always been near the top of the al-Qaeda target list. No country, least of all Britain, can opt out of the war on terror. Nobody is under any illusion: no matter how much luck and skill you might have in combating the terrorists, something terrible is bound to happen at some stage.

And if the worst does occur, say in London, the political fall-out will be less dramatic here. After all, the main opposition party unequivocally supported the war and still does. Britons were far less hostile to the war than were the Spanish: Britain remains fairly evenly divided over it, while in Spain over 90% thought it wrong. Anyway, ministers protest, the Spanish government made the fatal mistake of trying to gain political advantage from a terrorist outrage by pinning it on the wrong set of murderers: this government would never do that.

Like much else said about the war on terror, this is only partly convincing. In the first place, although there were strong arguments for the war in Iraq, among the weakest were those that claimed it was integral to the war on terror. Mr Blair deserves credit for being one of the first political leaders to understand how the world was changed by September 11th, and this newspaper thinks he was right to support America in getting rid of Saddam Hussein. But many people who are serious about fighting al-Qaeda quite reasonably ask whether invading Iraq helped or hindered that effort. Mr Blair's insistence on conflating the two does not help him.

Bombs and ballots

Britain was indeed under threat before the bombs in Spain, but those bombs may well have increased the threat. The terrorists have seen how effectively their bombs can leverage unhappiness over the war. Mr Blair can't say it, but he knows that the response of Spanish voters and their new prime minister, Jose Luis Rodrguez Zapatero, to the assault on their society has made hitting Britain even more tempting to al-Qaeda.

Despite the official line, the possibility of a major terrorist spectacular during the election campaign is now being taken very seriously (although the lack of a fixed election date will hinder the terrorists' planning). But nobody can gauge what the political impact of such an attack would be. A poll carried out this week by YouGov for Sky News found that 75% believed that Britain's role in the Iraq war had made the country more vulnerable. However, with no plausible beneficiary of the voters' anger except the anti-war Liberal Democrats, the outcome of the election might well be unaffected.

But what of Mr Blair? People believe, rightly, that Iraq was Mr Blair's war. Without his fervour and conviction, Britain might not have fought. If the bombs go off, how will they judge Mr Blair? It is difficult to imagine more terrible circumstances for Mr Brown finally to achieve his life's ambition. But after the past week, it is far from unthinkable.

Commentary feature looks at the challenges facing UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in the light of the terrorist threat facing the UK and other western countries.

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