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A Hard Man to Pin Down

Yesterday the press came to nail Blair, but he evaded them. Now he must show us what he's really made of

Friday, July 26, 2002
By Polly Toynbee
The Guardian

It will be a battle of ideas, a knock-down, drag-out declaration not just of European solidarity, but of European ideals. However often Blair protests - as he now does frequently - that the choice between the US way and the European way is a false dichotomy, that is how the euro campaign lines will be drawn: one vision of the good society will be a conservative model combining warm beer little Englandism with wild west US free marketeering. The other will be European social democracy, well-regulated capitalism and a welfare state. That will be the choice.

What will history make of the man? As parliament broke until October, there he stood at his second prime ministerial press conference bestriding the nation - to say nothing of Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Palestine and all of Africa. More than that, he bestrides the Summer Splash play scheme for deprived children, the adult numeracy and literacy targets and the 15-month inpatient waiting list, no detail too small, no world crisis too big.

Since the press conference was interminably long, so long that it descended to the shocking state of northern railway bridges, there was much time just to sit and contemplate the leader. His visage is unimpressive, his features ill-defined, his persona unremarkable. Some of the gargoyles of the press pack offer much more emphatic presence. Consider Thatcher's iron image at the height of her powers, which is so long-lasting people still want to knock her marble head off. Or Churchill's orotund omnipresence in the national imagination; Wilson's dry and wily wit; or Macmillan's foxy charm. Here instead is, well, just an ordinary kinda guy. How will history mould the memory of this elusive man? Slippery, I wrote at first, but that is the wrong word: he is not evasive, nor insincere by the standards of his predecessors, yet he remains hard to pin down, open to much interpretation. Third way was less a cunning device than a deep state of being. He is still a prime minister in waiting, waiting to do one great thing worthy of his unprecedented power.

For who ever commanded so much? After five years, two wars, foot and mouth, stock market meltdown, political dramas from dome disaster to dicey donations, black rod lese-majeste, economy with truths, fiddling of figures, control freakery, spin mania, he has not just survived, he still sweeps all before him. Exposing himself to a quiverful of arrows from the mighty parliamentary committee chairs, not one bolt touched a hair on his body. Yesterday, although the lobby were determined not let him escape unscathed again, there was not a hit, not even a nick with a rubber tip. How relaxed, at ease and unafraid he seemed, how agile at avoiding any killer TV quote. Now he has come out from behind the spin protectors who did him such harm, he finds the enemy disarmed by his new glasnost.

The dogs of the lobby it was who died of boredom by the end, looking at their watches, longing for lunch as he fielded question after question from randomly unpredictable foreign and regional correspondents.

"I'm happy to take every question," he said sweetly to the flagging sea of reporters. "Would it be better to take everyone, or just two more and call it a day?"

"Call it a day!" the defeated room mumbled back like a classroom begging for the school bell.

Shockingly some members of the old lobby slunk out before the end of the class, bored both by questions big (Africa) and questions small (children). They dared not engage in the usual Westminster village bullying miasma under the full glare of the live cameras. They shuffled off, their bluff called, Wizards of Oz exposed as little men in green glasses, while the PM strode away with a holiday spring in his step. Extraordinary.
(More: The Guardian Online News Source)
2002 MediaGuardian.co.uk © Guardian Newspapers, Limited.

Dan