A JOURNEY By Tony Blair, Hutchinson, Rs 999

In the history of post-War Britain, only two leaders showed themselves to be electorally invincible over successive elections. For the Conservatives, Margaret Thatcher led her party to three successive election victories and her 11-year tenure as prime minister changed the face of her country. For Labour, Tony Blair broke the jinx that prevented the party from getting re-elected. He equalled Thatcher’s record of consecutive electoral victories and governed the United Kingdom for exactly a decade.

The comparison with Thatcher, unfortunately, ends here. Whereas Thatcher left an enduring legacy — Thatcherism has come to symbolize a particular approach to political economy — and, along with Lord Salisbury and Winston Churchill, remains an iconic figure for a substantial section of committed Tories, Blair’s legacy seems to be more ephemeral. If Thatcher was a conviction politician, propelled by strong ideological considerations, Blair is the epitome of the pragmatist. He didn’t always do “the right thing” (one of David Cameron’s catchphrases); he did what was expedient and politically saleable. He began his political innings as a breath of fresh air and a departure from the stodgy ways of an ossified Establishment. By the time he departed, he was regarded with some disdain as a master of “spin” whose public positions were disingenuous.

The image appears to be persisting. The release of A Journey, far from being a grand occasion, was marred by abusive protests. Even his noble decision to donate the royalties of the autobiography to the British Legion was decried as a cynical bid to seek atonement for the deaths of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. What is particularly ironic is that the anger flowed from the ranks of those associated with the Labour Party.

Reading through his voluminous recollections of the period between his elevation to the leadership of the Labour Party and his final departure from active politics, it is not difficult to understand why. The thing that is most held against Blair is that he was too smooth and was, therefore, fake. That may be an overstatement but flexibility was often the signature tune of Blair. Unlike those who came to the Labour Party for reasons of utmost conviction, Blair, it would seem, drifted into the party almost casually. Rarely, if ever, did he define himself as a socialist. His self-identity was that of a “moderniser”, a politician who knew how to mould public sentiment.

I found the early chapters on the manner in which he extricated the Labour Party from the clutches of committed ‘activists’ quite fascinating. Blair juxtaposed the impulses of ‘normal’ people with the impulses of the ideologically-driven, and his sympathies were always with the former. He hasn’t bothered to conceal his profound admiration for Thatcher and makes it clear that his New Labour project wouldn’t have passed the electoral test had it not appropriated some of the Thatcherite legacy. Blair was electorally successful because he complemented Labour’s traditional blue-collar, Scottish and inner-city vote with the support of a new middle class that cared about mortgages, the quality of education and a non-doctrinaire approach to politics. The Blair loyalists were dubbed “luvvies” by the media and New Labour’s identification with a more casual, tie-less Britain — the so-called Cool Britannia —gave him the cutting edge. Once Labour regressed into its ‘core constituency’, as it did under Gordon Brown, it conceded the New Labour space to the real Blair inheritor, David Cameron.

Blair was a practical politician who learnt rapidly on the job. Apart from some delicious pen portraits of public figures ranging from Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, John Prescott, to the Queen and Princess Diana, the book is peppered with practical advice to the practising politician: the need to keep a tight diary, the willingness to acknowledge mistakes and, above all, the importance of being perceived favourably by the electorate. I would unreservedly recommend the section on the long-drawn Anglo-Irish peace process to any person involved in the resolution of seemingly intractable disputes.

The book is a must-read for understanding the political processes, but it is a disappointment in its insights into events such as Afghanistan, Iraq or even the management of the economy. It was Blair’s involvement in the two post-9/11 wars that led to his isolation from his own party and public unpopularity at home. For a politician who was earlier so guided by expediency, Blair, in the aftermath of 9/11, turned into either a conviction politician or a poodle of the US. It is said that his growing attachment to Christian ethics made him an unwitting ally of President Bush’s moral certitudes. His enthusiastic endorsement of the Iraq war was, in any case, a very un-Blair thing to do considering the depth of public hostility. The autobiography, unfortunately, doesn’t tell us much more than we already know. Maybe, he was inhibited by the fact that these are still ongoing battles.

As someone who admired Blair till the bitter end, I have mixed feelings about the book. As autobiographies go, it is far more readable than Thatcher’s and far more honest than Churchill’s erudite history of his wartime administration. As a casual reader, I was delighted by the anecdotes and riveted by the deftness with which the homilies were presented. However, as a keen student of British politics, I couldn’t but feel a sense of disappointment.

Maybe the expectations were false. In the battle between the popular and the specialist, Blair’s preferences were pre-determined. That’s why he was such a clever and successful leader.