THE stage is set for the denouement in Britain's election drama, but the figures on stage do not have the stature required to fill the set, nor a script to match the style. The characters have words to mouth but little to say, images to project but nothing to show. John Major seems short of support, and Tony Blair, of respect. And May 1 will bring millions to vote out the one they are less keen on. The other will win by default.
Tony Blair, Labour's slippery prime minister-in-waiting, is not popular. Prime Minister John Major, grey but reliable, is not unpopular. But the opinion polls all point out that Labour has become the incidental beneficiary of a mood for change, though there has been a recent narrowing of the lead.
All of Blair's political U-turns have done little to sweep him off course. In his days in Old Labour, Tony Blair was committed to an integrated Europe. New Labour now repeats the Tory opposition to a federal superstate. Like the Tories, Blair promises a referendum on a single currency. And like the Tories, he is waving the Union Jack at Europe over rights for British fishermen (European wars these days are mostly over fish). The man who abused the privatisation programme of the Conservatives has now adopted it, though he has chosen to leave it out of his election manifesto to keep dissidence quiet for now. The Blair of today is not just different from the Blair of old, he is the exact opposite.
Tony Blair, earlier the champion of union rights for workers, now opposes union demands for protection against unfair dismissal. "You must be sensitive to the fact that employers are trying to run a business," he now says. It was not too long back that Blair spoke strongly about devolving powers to the regions and to local councils. Now, following a well-aimed Tory attack, he has begun to speak on curbs on devolution. Tony Blair sends his children to opt-out schools outside his own area but wants Labour to deny parents that right. This, deputy prime minister Michael Heseltine declared, is "appalling hypocrisy".
"Mr Blair's ideological wanderings during this election are becoming pathological, columnist Simon Jenkins said in a caustic write-up in The Times. "I do not know this man today. 1 see someone quite different. And if I see someone different today, I wonder whom I shall see tomorrow.
But Blair is presenting his U-turning as a virtue. "When the Tories go on about U-turns, they underline the fact that New Labour is new," he said. Hut this New Labour, the Tories are telling voters, is really old Tory, their beliefs no more than Tory talk echoed through Tony Blair. The Conservatives have been busy the last couple of weeks, listing New Labour ideas filched from the Conservatives.
Strangely, the voters did not seem to find the double stand. Labour still led in the opinion polls. Allowing even for significant inaccuracies in the polls, this pointed to some millions of British people seeing through Tony Blair but still voting for him.
As parties stole one another's policies, they grabbed each other's symbols too. Following on from a lion called King who failed to roar for the Tories, Labour brought in a bulldog called Fitz, to show just how Churchillian it can get in its new avatar. A newspaper photographed Tony Blair's ties for several days running to show he now likes them a nice Tory blue rather than the old Labour red. And Labour posters now appear in every colour but its traditional red. It's an election marked by what Americans call "the same difference" on both sides.
The leader as performer is the star event of New Labour's new act. Blair's team of media-minders visit the site of every engagement in advance and set the stage for their leader to present himself before pre-arranged audiences with well-rehearsed lines. The campaign buses of both parties carry wordsmiths specialising in one-liners, rebuttal advisers, media-minders and political strategists. But in this business of arranged appearances, the Tories are a far second to Labour, and the Liberal Democrats an almost invisible third.
For the moment, a slick American-style campaigning by the Blair team seems to be working, though his camera-smart style invited derision from the media. His American-advised campaign was calculated to suit camera angles set by Blair's PR managers, or the 'spin doctors' as England likes to call them. "Tony Blair doesn't change his tie without consulting his spin doctor, Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown said in an interview to the Sunday Times.
Meanwhile, the public showed a discernible lack of interest in the election. Tony Blair blamed this phenomena on "media cynicism", and promised to "make it come alive" and to "break through the news blackout on vision and conviction".
The media has become the stage for time-spaced conversations and rebuttals where issues have become fuzzy and differences uncertain. The Tories started off what the media called a "wobbly weekend" for Labour by focusing on its 'two faces'. But this didn't save the Tories from running into trouble themselves. Many Tory candidates disregarded the party line by issuing their own manifestos opposing a single currency for Europe. Labour immediately pounced on the issue. "If it (the Conservative party) is incapable of being led, then it's incapable of governing," said Blair.
The Tory revolt, joined by about 180 MPs, had Major almost begging. "Whether you agree with me or disagree, whether you like me or loathe me, don't bind my hands," he said at his press conference. He asked for options. Otherwise, he said, the country would "send the British Prime Minister naked into that conference chamber (in Europe) with nothing to negotiate".
John Major has hit a fundamental fault line. Resistance to Europe runs in the British blood. A meeting called by the Referendum Party to oppose an integrated Europe was attended by over 10,000 people, far more than any crowd that attended any recent Labour or Conservative party meeting. By keeping options open on joining a single currency, Major looks like losing out twice over, with the revolt in his ranks and the ebbing Conservative support. The heart of Conservative support is anti-Europe and opposed to a single currency displacing the British pound. Tory candidates out looking for votes know that, and are going with the natural Conservative flow. Labour, on this as on other issues, has followed the Conservative line--it will keep its options on a single currency open. But on this count Labour, unlike Tory, will not lose traditional votes. If the opinion polls are right, Labour will win with a majority of about 150 to 200 seats in the 653-member House of Commons. Not many within Labour expect such a landslide. One in seven, and by some estimates one in four, votes remain undecided. And in 1992, while opinion polls had pointed to a Labour victory, the Tories came through. However, few believe the opinion polls could go as wildly wrong this time.
Richard Eyre, director of the Royal National Theatre wrote in the Financial Times that over the years "politics has declined to the condition of show business, and the politicians have become obliged to become performers. They choose their costumes carefully, their decor fastidiously, they discuss their roles with their directors, fellow actors and agents; they study their scripts, they rehearse, they put on make-up, and they give performances; they adapt their acting styles from the would-be intimacy of the small screen to the not-to-be avoided histrionics of the public platform; and sometimes, often disastrously, they improvise."
But the voters, a weary audience, are only waiting for the day the act ends, the campaigning stops and governance can begin.
