Labour's diminished returns in the British general elections were always going to be about Tony Blair. Victory had never been in doubt, it is the quantum of the majority that is being seen as a true gauge of the electorate’s will. For voters with really just one viable option, New Labour, the verdict is almost a referendum on Blair. So where does a slashing of his majority in the Commons by 100 seats leave him? This was, by all reckoning, a single-issue election: Iraq and Blair’s dodgy case for war. It is in this concern that guided voters that the success of the Blairite revolution can be found, as well as the tragic humiliation of the man himself.Of all politicians around the world in recent years, Blair has had the most intimate of engagements with his people. A decade ago he changed the Labour party, and made it electable. He rescued it from trade unionist negativism and constructed a platform for reform of public services by harnessing market forces. Antiquated power equations were sought to be broken through devaluation and constitutional reform. Old slogans of Cool Britannia have vaporised, but the message was essentially a modernising one. And in this scheme, Blair played a very personal card: he asked for the people’s trust, for them to elect him and leave to him the headache of carrying remnants of Old Labour along in the exercise. Over time, policy-making appeared to bypass the cabinet to a trusted team at 10 Downing Street. But as long as Britain was being fast-tracked to upgraded public services, there was little disquiet. In retrospect, Blair used this trust expeditiously. He configured the polity and governance in such a way that his reforms were irreversible and, moreover, political opposition was elbowed way to the right and left. Evidence of his achievement lies in popular confidence that even if Blair advances his exit in favour of Gordon Brown, the agenda will not change.But that intimacy, that holding of trust, eventually unmade Blair. On Iraq, a reluctant people finally kept their faith in his judgment. Which is why the deceptions in the case for war were projected on him alone. It is the very peculiarly personalised brand of Blair’s politics that has allowed the Iraq mis-step to overshadow the sum of his extremely substantial achievements.
