Blair, the British prime minister, is one of the few statisticians of our time: he has now decided to make the European Union start off on a new footing.
The British Prime Minister Tony Blair will be the most powerful man in the world, at least on paper, during the second half of 2005. In this period chance has given Great Britain both the presidency of the G-8, the club, which brings together the eight richest and most influential countries and makes crucial decisions for all, and the rotational presidency of the European Union, which is experiencing one of the most delicate moments in its history and thus desperately needs a strong leader. Besides, Blair has risen to these powerful positions at a particularly favourable time for him: he has just achieved his third consecutive electoral victory and France and Holland’s rejection of the European Constitution has given him that which The Economist has maliciously called “The triumph of the perfidious Albion”, in other words the political integration process has been slowed down to the advantage of a more liberalistic idea of the Union.
In fact, many accused Blair of sabotage at the close of the last European Council, which was held in Brussels, because he refused to give up the so-called “British discount” on contributions obtained by Ms. Thatcher 21 years ago when her country was undergoing a deep crisis, thus blocking the Community budget’s approval for the period 2007-2013. Doubtless London’s proverbial egotism had a hand in his refusal, but when he bound any concession to a general reform of the Union’s accounts to a drastic reduction in funds allocated to agriculture and to the advantage of research, education and development, Blair in practice faced a crucial issue and did a good turn to all Europeans. 
Besides this favourable contingency, there is no doubt that the fifty-two year-old prime minister, who has reached the peak of his career when many other politicians are still only half way up the social ladder, will go down in history as one of the most skilled and charismatic statisticians of our time. Probably the most extraordinary feature of his lightening career is that he has long been both a model for the reformist European left wing and a reliable landmark for liberal and conservative leaders like George W. Bush, Aznar and Berlusconi. Subsequently attacked on two fronts, he has always succeeded in overcoming even the hardest situations, as when part of his party accused him of having lied to the country concerning the threat represented by Saddam’s mass destruction weapons (“An Iraqi missile could strike Great Britain in 45 minutes”) to justify war against Iraq.
Son of a conservative lawyer and educated in Fettes, the most exclusive Scottish college, Tony had an extremely carefree and wild adolescence, which certainly did not foretell such a bright future for him. It seems that his teachers breathed a sigh of relief when he completed senior high school and applied to Oxford. He was a mediocre student at university too - a skilled speaker with a moderate cultural depth, who seemed destined to play a secondary role in a legal practice. But during the traditional period of apprenticeship, he had the fortune of meeting Cherie Booth, daughter of a prince of the Law Courts, who was well established in the labour party. It seems to have been love at first sight, but also the first step in the youth’s political career. After an honourable defeat in a safe conservative electoral college in 1979, already in 1983, at just thirty, Tony was elected Member of Parliament for Sedgefield, a city in the far north of England near the family’s town of origin.
Those very elections marked Margaret Thatcher’s second electoral triumph - at the time the iron lady, having returned from the victory over Argentina in the Falkland war, was turning Great Britain inside out like a sock. Though he was increasingly involved in the shadow government, young Blair was not insensitive to her charm: though in the House of Commons 
he always conscientiously opposed the governments actions when it broke up the miner’s strike, rationalized the social status or started the first great privatization campaign conducted in industrialised nations, he also took note that Ms. Thatcher’s reforms were drawing the country out of a ten year crisis, which had won it the name “the sick man of Europe”. In the three terms of office of her legislatures, the iron lady’s work sanctioned the victory of the public sector over the private one, of individualism over pan-tradeunionism and of meritocracy on egalitarianism. Besides, unlike the majority of his party, which was still bound to the old patterns of Fabian socialism and of the State taking care of citizens “from the cradle to the tomb”, Tony approved in his heart.
In 1990 events precipitated when the conservative party, taken by a fit of masochism, decided to replace Margaret Thatcher at the head of the government with colourless John Major. He succeeded once again in winning the ’92 elections, but it was clear that, in the right situation, the country was ready for a sudden change in political alliances. Blair, now leader of the Labour Party’s moderate faction, decided to remove the famous article IV from the Statute - it prescribed the nationalization of means of production. He had his great chance in ’94, when an unforeseen heart attack struck down the leader John Smith. After signing a secret pact with the other would-be secretary, Gordon Brown, who envisaged an alternation between the two at the end of the second legislature, Tony succeeded in being elected with an adequate majority to start the party’s reform.
It was a real cyclone for the old Labour Party, which was immediately renamed “New Labour” to better mark the abandonment of old socialist doctrines. In a couple of years Blair changed its image, men and programme, performing a right turn, which was even more drastic than the one made by German social democrats in the legendary congress, which was held in Bad Godesberg. With his exceptional talent as communicator and by resorting to certain professionals of information like Peter Mandelson, the current European Commissioner, Tony succeeded in presenting these novelties so effectively to voters that his party returned to power in the 1997 elections – after 18 years spent in the opposition – with a crushing majority in parliament and he became the youngest prime minister since 1810.
It is greatly to Blair’s credit that he has not disavowed even one of the reforms implemented by Ms. Thatcher, but if at all he has tried to improve and perfect them. A return to the past was immediately ruled out, though it would have been to the advantage of Labour’s traditional electors. The party’s left wing tried to resist and trade unions expressed their disapproval, but Tony was able to silence them all due to the extent of his success. By now New Labour was focused on a new middle class typical of a postindustrial nation and committed to providing services, rather than on a labour class, whose ranks were gradually thinning.
Blair’s first four years as prime minister were marked by a string of successes: the concession 
of autonomy to Scotland and Wales (the famous devolution, which Umberto Bossi likes so much), the agreement, which ended the war of terror in Northern Ireland, the reorganisation of the House of Lords, which involved the exclusion of many hereditary peers, and considerably strengthened public services. For a moment he also seemed to draw close to the economic and monetary Union, which London had not joined when the Maastricht treatise was signed, but then public opinion’s opposition, attachment to the pound sterling and the good economic progress convinced him to adopt a waiting position instead.
Optimising the boom inherited from Ms. Thatcher, Blair continued his reforms without increasing fiscal pressure. The country’s response was so enthusiastic that Labour’s majority increased further in the 2001 elections: by now the party was firmly rooted in the centre of the political alignment, confining Eurosceptic conservatives to the right wing and (pulling a face at history) the Liberal Democrats to the left wing. Considering the remarkable success achieved by its economic policy, New Labour became a sort of landmark for other European socialist parties, including the Social Democratic Party of the time, though it had very few socialist features.
Then September 11 came along for Blair too. Unlike other European leaders, he never had a moment’s hesitation. Though his dear friend Clinton was not in the white House anymore, and a conservative like Bush had taken his place, he sided one hundred and one percent with the United States, actively participating in the war against Afghanistan, implementing draconian measures (considered liberticide by some) against Islamic terrorism and finally becoming one of the great advocates of war against Saddam Hussein, which witnessed Great Britain’s participation from the start with an expeditionary force of 46,000 men. His interventions to the advantage of the attack against Baghdad in the House of Commons, over the TV, in congresses and conferences were even more decided than those made by the American president. But, unlike Bush, who at least at first had public opinion on his side on this issue, from the start Blair’s warmongering met with a strong resistance from the party, the government, many newspapers and especially the people. On this occasion, the longstanding pacifist tradition of the British people, which had made itself heard both against Hitler in the ’30s and against the USSR in the ‘50s and ‘60s (do you recall Bertrand Russell and his march for unilateral disarmament?) underwent an unexpected revival, fed by the large number of soldiers killed in the warfare, which followed the fall of the Baathist regime. Ministers resigned, there were accusations that reports sent in by services were being manipulated and there was even an attempt at impeachment. Sarcasm flowed unrestrained: Labour’s left wing considered Blair “Bush’s pet dog” and “governor of the 51st State of the Union”. But, despite 
the protests, the clear loss of popularity and the disapproval of other members of the Socialist International, the prime minister did not veer an inch from his course. He rather headed the European states, which supported America, and followed a collision route with France and Germany, who opposed the war and are to date actively participating in Iraq’s reconstruction.
The Iraqi issue doubtless also influenced the last election results, which witnessed Labour’s majority drop from over 200 to just 67 seats. The next day many even spoke of a “defeat” and that Blair had at least been heavily resized, theorising that he will soon be forced to hand the sceptre to Gordon Brown to pay homage to the already mentioned “Granita pact”, which was signed 11 years ago. Tony has let people talk and made them believe that he will not request a fourth mandate, but he has continued to rule the nation as if nothing had changed, launching two new important international projects: double aid to Subsaharian Africa and ensure new focus on environmental problems and greenhouse gases. These run as a leitmotiv through the British presidency of the G8. In an internal framework he wants to invest once again in social services and to implement a major reform of universities, which have lately lost credit, compared to their glorious tradition.
Blair has succeeded in maintaining an intense, closely knit private and family life despite this whirl of events and initiatives. An Anglican with Anglo-Catholic inclinations, he married a Catholic, brings up his four children as Catholics and often attends Catholic functions: it is no easy situation to face for a prime minister in Great Britain, where memories of wars of religion are still vivid, the queen is the head of the Anglican Church and Catholics are often also called papists. But Blair’s personal behaviour too clashes with the tradition: for example, he spends his holidays abroad (very often in Tuscany), the guest of nobles or industrial magnates, turning a deaf ear to the protests of the usual moralists as only Winston Churchill had the courage to do.
The truth is that Tony is a warrior: a man who is true to his principles and does not easily bend when faced with signs of protest. Now, virtually alone against all, he has decided to make Europe start off on a new footing, and should he succeed, he will have performed a historical feat.
Livio Caputo
