Prime Minister Shows Value in Hewing to Center
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 8, 2005
LONDON, May 7 -- Can the British Labor Party help the Democrats in the United States find their way back to power? In a week when Prime Minister Tony Blair was humbled by the voters here on the way to a reelection victory, that may be an odd question. But even a damaged Blair and his party offer lessons that analysts on both sides of the Atlantic say could aid the Democrats as they look toward elections in 2006 and 2008.
Blair has been left weakened by Thursday's election, rebuked by voters for his alliance with President Bush as America's staunchest ally in the Iraq war. His future as prime minister may be limited and his party faces turbulence. Still, Labor's three consecutive general election victories constitute a record the party had never achieved and one the Democrats have not realized since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Politicians and the press here are focused on what went wrong for Blair. For Democrats, the significance of the election may lie as much in the ability of Labor to win an election at a time when its leader was so personally unpopular. The reason is because Labor for now remains the dominant pole in British politics, thanks over the years to Blair's personal talents and the party's success in redefining the landscape.
Once dominated by the left, Labor under Blair won a landslide in 1997 by moving to the middle. In power, Labor has governed with a mix of liberal and conservative policies and an eye on "middle England." Today, the Labor Party occupies a huge amount of space along the political spectrum, so much so that the opposition parties have been forced further to the fringes. "They've done an amazing job of being successfully centrist," said Anthony King, a professor of government at Essex University and an election night analyst for the BBC.
The parallels between Labor and the American Democrats are imperfect. Blair's party won another parliamentary majority Thursday with 36 percent of the vote. Britain's multiparty politics create dynamics that are different from the forces in the United States. The domestic debate begins with acceptance of a governmental role far beyond what it is in the United States. And what works for a party in power is not always the formula for a party seeking power.
Still, for more than a decade, Labor and the Democrats have been something of a shared enterprise, trading on one another's successes, learning from each other's failures. After Thursday, there is something of both for the Democrats to absorb.
The most important may still be Labor's success is sucking up the oxygen of its opponents. In power, Labor has effectively frustrated the once-mighty Conservative Party's efforts to regroup after its 1997 loss. Labor may now be blessed with weak opposition, as one voter told Blair during a TV studio town meeting. But Blair has kept the Tories at bay by never surrendering the issues where Labor -- or the Democrats in the United States -- has natural advantages.
Under the guidance of Gordon Brown, Britain's finance minister and likely prime minister when Blair steps down, Labor has made the economy its number one priority, supporting growth policies that have provided stability and prosperity. On health, education and welfare, Labor has mixed more spending with changes designed to improve the delivery of services.
Much remains on that project, but the mix has been broadly acceptable to a majority of the country. "No one really argued that there was no improvement in public services or the economy," said David Miliband, a former domestic policy adviser to Blair who was named to a cabinet position in the new government. "People could say they wanted more, but they recognized that there was improvement."
Labor also has played aggressively on the opposition's turf. Blair and Labor blunted the Tories' attempt to tap into anti-immigration sentiment with policies designed to protect Britain's borders while making the case that immigration is good for the country. Blair has never forgotten to talk about crime, and while Labor's policies on crime, homeland security and antisocial behavior have angered civil libertarians, they have prevented the Conservatives from gaining traction.
"Blair has left the right with no openings," said Bruce Reed, president of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council in Washington.
The irony for Democrats is that Blair and Brown found the formula for their success by studying the 1992 "New Democrat" campaign that carried Bill Clinton to the presidency. But British analysts see the Democrats as having drifted since the former president left office in 2001, and some Blair advisers believe Clinton's legacy has been squandered.
Blairism, as it is called here, may not be the perfect model for the Democrats. It may no longer even by the perfect model for the Labor Party, given dissatisfaction here with some of Blair's efforts at triangulation between the old Labor Party and the Conservatives. The public distrusted Blair on more than the war. Labor's spin-doctoring was seen as government by insincerity and took its toll.
Few strategists believe a simple return to Clinton's centrist New Democrat formulation of the 1990s by itself will get the Democrats out of the doldrums. The world today is different, and the politics of the country have shifted. But the records of Blair and Clinton suggest that an opposition party must recognize its weaknesses and do something about them and know its strengths and never abandon them.
In 2000, Democrats surrendered their advantage on the economy when Al Gore decided not to make the economic record of the Clinton administration the central theme of his campaign for president. Democratic strategists believe that Bush's economic record, particularly on fiscal matters, provides an opening to make the Democrats once again the party of stability, growth and fiscal discipline. But party leaders have yet to do so.
The resurgence of the liberal wing of the party in 2004, born of anger at Bush over Iraq and other issues, has led some Democratic leaders to conclude that the route back may be through an energized, progressive, grass-roots army. A number of strategists rightly see this as one of the party's great strengths. But the U.S. and British elections suggest that is only a partial answer. Labor won this week with a divided base; the Conservatives lost with a united base, just as the Democrats lost last fall with their base united.
"Democrats can take a lesson from [the campaign run by Conservative leader Michael] Howard -- not to isolate yourself and not just motivate your base," said Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster who was an adviser to Blair during the campaign here.
Where Blair, Brown and Labor cannot help the Democrats is on the social issues or the intersection of religion and politics. There is nothing comparable in British politics. Howard tried to make abortion an issue at one point but quickly abandoned it under pressure from all parts of the spectrum. When Blair proposed using the words "God bless" in a speech before the Iraq war, his advisers hooted him down, according to Peter Stothard's book "Thirty Days." Democrats will have to find their own way in these areas.
The same may be true for national security, a debate that continues to rage among Democrats. It is not clear what lesson Democrats can or should draw from Blair, given the firestorm over Iraq here. One Democratic strategist, after watching what Blair went through, said he believes that those who suggested the Democrats would have been better off in 2004 by being unreservedly in favor of the war are plain wrong. Others say Democrats could benefit by studying the conviction Blair demonstrated in the face of rebellion in his own ranks.
With this week's British elections, Democrats have been reminded that politics is a process of renewal and rejuvenation, even for a party in power. The task is even more urgent for a party out of power. The process requires strong leadership, clear principles, tough decisions and some compromises, all with a clear goal in mind. As King put it, "The aim of this exercise is to win elections."