UK Succession In Slow MotionMaimon Schwarzschild

Tony Blair, under intense pressure from his Labour Party, announced last week that he would leave the Prime Ministership within a year.   Most of his party seem to want him to “set a date” and go sooner – or soonest.  Michael Barone gives a characteristically shrewd and level-headed assessment:

Blair’s announcement was, by his own admission, forced on him. It ispart of the long story of the tension between him and Chancellor of theExchequer Gordon Brown, which goes back to the agreement [in 1994] by whichBlair became party leader (and thus prime minister after the 1997election) and Brown was promised — or was he? (there is heateddisagreement) — that he would succeed him in good time. Of course, theycame to disagree on what good time meant.

Although British friendship towards the US is deeply disliked by the Labour Left, Barone cautions that the slow-motion deposition of Blair is not primarily about relations with America, and may not  necessarily affect relations for the worse:

Blair has conducted a foreign policy of armed intervention forhumanitarian purposes in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. It’snot clear that Brown would take similar stands. There was much grousingfrom all political quarters in Britain when Blair supported George W.Bush on Lebanon and refused to call for an early cease-fire. Brown isnot unfriendly to America; he vacations here on Cape Cod and is knownto prowl around bookstores in Cambridge, Mass. (though not in Plano,Texas). He has supported Blair on Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, andIraq. But how he would respond to future issues is unclear.

On the other hand, the Conservatives are not unequivocally warm towards the US:

It’s unclear also how the new Conservative leader David Cameron wouldrespond. He has been taking a skeptical-about-America line, partlybecause it’s politically popular, I suppose, but also probably out ofconviction. Americans should not assume that the Conservative Party isuniformly pro-American. There’s a vein of dislike for vulgar Americanson the British right, and many Conservatives share the disdain ofForeign Office career diplomats for George W. Bush and Americanpolicies generally. The British prime ministers least sympathetic toAmerica over the past 70 years were Neville Chamberlain and EdwardHeath, both Conservatives. Cameron could become prime minister afterthe next election, which most observers expect will be called in 2009.I’m inclined to think that Gordon Brown will become prime minister nextMay, that he will be generally friendly and cooperative with the UnitedStates but will not be as close to George W. Bush as Blair has been,and that Britain under a Brown government will continue to be aconstructive and useful ally.

Barone thinks the Blair-Brown split might fatallly divide the Labour Party, just as the deposition of Margaret Thatcher by her Tory colleagues crippled the Conservatives in Britain for a decade and more:

We complain about our presidential selection system and often with goodreason. But the British system has its defects, too. Like lack of termlimits. Margaret Thatcher served 11 years as prime minister; Tony Blairwill presumably serve 10 years in the post. Both transformed theirparties and led them to three general election victories. But theyoverstayed their time, and the messy process of ending their terms — inThatcher’s case it certainly did, and, in Blair’s case it quite likelywill — hurt their parties for years.

Actually, I think Labour has fewer Blair loyalists than there were Thatcher loyalists among Conservatives; and also less intensely loyal loyalists.  So I am sceptical that Blair’s departure will split Labour – assuming he does go, and goes with reasonably good grace.  On the other hand, much of Labour’s “base” (including most of its Members of Parliament) would apparently like a full-throated leftist anti-American party.  Is such a party electable in Britain?  Blair, and probably Brown too, think not.  They also think it wouldn’t be a good thing even if such a party could be elected.

The real civil war within the Labour Party may not be between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and their  respective entourages, but between “New Labour” – meaning Blair and Brown and a relatively few other leaders – and a “base” which may well hanker for going over a left-wing and anti-American cliff.