Misplaced "Dealing"
by Tony Blair

What did you think of Tony Blair's TV performance, with Jeremy Paxman, last week? I was impressed with the PM's buoyancy and confidence, and sympathetic to his basic gentlemanly decency. I was left, however, with three overwhelming impressions.

First, of an evasive person, unable to maintain an honest eye-contact with Paxman for more than a couple of seconds, his eyes wandering off all the time into some vague unfocused middle-distance. Where was he going to? Certainly not into contact with me.

Second, of a man without religious faith who was trying to compensate for that with a strange communitarian "contract philosophy", positing that there was a deal between each individual and the community, a kind of consensual morality, which entitled the community to withdraw individual benefits in pursuit of social conformity.

Third, of someone without any grasp of what most Labour Party members understand by socialism. I now have no doubt that he is not a socialist, but a decent liberal - not a Tory, but a decent, ambitious, middle-of-the-road Liberal, without any strong sense of the role of the State, except as a holder of the societal ring, the guardian of fair play.  With no understanding of the imperative of equality, with only a tenuous grasp of personal freedom, and precious little fraternity.

But it represents his most egregious error.  Indeed, that error also generates New Labour's nastiest errors of judgment, its nastiest illiberalities.  If Labour has never been punished politically for this misplaced "dealing" philosophy, it is because (I suspect) that neither the Tories nor the LibDems have decisively rejected it - they are tarred with the same brush, the same fudge.