The fatal timidity of the centre left

Tony Blair was dominating the UK and cutting a dash on the world stage, even though he wasn’t yet prime minister. He was setting the agenda, promising a new world of investment in health and education, a confident internationalism, a striking pro-Europeanism. The Conservatives under John Major – a good man undermined by nutcases from within – were preparing for opposition, while hoping to avoid oblivion. 

And what did Blair do to demonstrate his self-confidence, his infectious optimism? He flew halfway around the world to bend his knee to Rupert Murdoch, to address a News Corporation conference on Hayman Island, a holiday resort off Australia’s Queensland coast.

“It seems obvious,” Blair wrote in his memoirs, more than a decade later after leaving 10 Downing Street, “the country’s most powerful newspaper proprietor, whose publications have hitherto been rancorous in their opposition to the Labour party, invites us into the lion’s den. You go, don’t you?”

In one respect he was right. Blair’s concerted wooing of media magnates who had always supported the Conservatives and beaten up on Labour ended up buying him several years of either good publicity or at least blunted criticism. 

To use a term that has been on many people’s lips during this current German general election campaign, Blair had “closed the gates of hell”. For a while at least.

That phrase was uttered in the Bundestag at the end of January by the Social Democrat Rolf Mützenich. He was appealing to members of parliament not to support an immigration bill being proposed by Friedrich Merz, leader of the Christian Democrats and prospective chancellor, that was being strongly supported by the far right AfD.

“The original sin will follow you forever,” Mützenich warned the chamber. He urged Merz and his allies to change course. “The gates of hell, we can still close them together.”

Merz was doing what mainstream politicians across Europe have been doing for some time, although taking it to a new level. He was trying to draw away support from the populists by adopting their policies. The same, it could be said, applies to Keir Starmer.

Worried stiff by the advances of Nigel Farage’s Reform – confirmed in the most recent opinion to be ahead of Labour and the Tories, a landmark moment – the British government let it be known it would be filming the next phase of door-busting deportations of illegal migrants, just as tougher legislation was being debated in the Commons. The difference between Merz and Starmer is that the former believes in the hardline approach; the latter does not. 

Merz’s dilemma is tactical. Is he managing to chip away at the softer end of the AfD’s voter base? And if he is, is he then losing some of his support to other parties? 

The opinion polls suggest his vote share is holding up and that he is a shoo-in for the chancellery. Put to one side the political calculation. He ardently believes that the benign approach to asylum adopted by his predecessor, Angela Merkel, was wrong.

Starmer’s dilemma is different because it is fundamental. He is a human rights lawyer who is doing what he’s doing because he is scared of the consequences of not doing it. In this case it is immigration; but it applies across all areas of government. This same double-negative ensnared Blair, just as it did Olaf Scholz, the outgoing chancellor, just as it did Gerhard Schröder and Clinton and Barack Obama in their time. 

It begs a wider question: what is it that you are in politics to do?

Most of all, it is about imposter syndrome. Were politicians such as these really comfortable with the exercise of power?

The disintegration of Scholz’s ‘traffic light’ coalition will provide a useful how-to guide for political scientists in how not to run a country. His supporters insist he was handed a poisoned chalice from the 2021 elections. It was always going to be next to impossible to navigate a path with three parties around the cabinet table. 

For sure, it wasn’t going to be easy, but the original coalition agreement seemed solid and presaged some important changes, particularly the modernisation of the economy and acceleration of the climate agenda. Two months later came the invasion of Ukraine, which dominated so much time – and required a huge budgetary revision.

Yes, but… there was nothing, even after that, standing in the way of public policy reform. What was needed, at home and in foreign policy, was for Scholz to show strong leadership. There would have been squalls; some compromises would have been required. But paralysis was not inevitable.

Blair and Starmer don’t have that constitutional excuse to fall back. Both enjoyed or are enjoying 150-plus majorities that would have allowed them to pursue their agendas with determination. There was nothing standing in their way – except their own fear.

In 1997, Blair had the world falling at his feet. His agenda for his first 100 days, worked out meticulously in advance, was impressive. Yet, as he later admitted, he could have gone further and faster. He complained that he was ground down by the system – and then Iraq came… 

Events get in the way, but they provide an insufficient excuse. What centrist politicians fail to ask themselves is why they feel the requirement to look over their shoulder at every turn.

No sooner had Blair got into Downing Street than attention to win the next election, and the one after. Three terms of office mark an impressive achievement – spectacular in Labour terms – but it was presaged on tactical retreats.

All recent politics is now seen through the lens of Donald Trump, and with good reason, as he seeks to undermine the entire post-1945 settlement. 

But first to his mini-me’s around the world. For Boris Johnson, the idea of looking over his shoulder (unless it was to check out potential from the opposite sex) would have been anathema. He finally achieved his life’s ambition to be “King of the World”, with two clear goals – to “get (his wretched) Brexit done” and to play Churchill. 

He achieved the former, to the country’s eternal deficit, and risibly failed in the latter. He had no fear, or none that he displayed anyway, even though he had a smaller majority and no shortage of enemies.

Giorgia Meloni is a more interesting test case. She has played Italy’s complicated constitution with aplomb. She jettisoned her previous penchant for all things Putin in order to buy the acquiescence of Ursula von der Leyen and the European Union. 

They have left her alone to pursue her domestic agenda, which includes a power grab on important parts of the media. She has become the darling of (much of) Brussels and (all of) Trump’s Washington. Despite troubles in court, she has yet to be spotted looking too troubled.

Trump is ripping up the rulebook. He is using raw power to achieve his goals – a so far inchoate but highly effective notion of disruption. 

His election victory was impressive, but it did not deliver the overwhelming mandate he assumed for himself even during the transition. He has relied on bravura, and the (correct) assumption that the Democrats would fold in the face of an onslaught.

Just as all-powerful Blair sought the permission of Murdoch, the no-more-powerful Trump sought the obedience of Elon Musk and the tech bros. Just a few months earlier, much of Silicon Valley had been ranged against him. 

They espoused approaches – to migration, to the workplace, to social norms – that were diametrically opposed to his. They believed themselves to be the masters of the universe; but he faced them down and they buckled. 

The lesson of Trump Mark II, still well before his 100 days, is that the right is almost always more adept at concentrating power and using it. Particularly the present-day populists. It is not faint-hearted, but it is a skill. And it is one that most of the time the centre left has failed to acquire.