The process of the handover from Prime Minister Tony Blair to Chancellor Gordon Brown has long been scripted. Act I began with the thrashed local elections--Labour lost councils all over the country and the Scottish National Party became the largest party in the Scottish Parliament. Brown wanted Blair to take responsibility for that.

Act II was Blair's announcement this morning that he will step down June 27. Act III will be Blair's endorsement of his rival, nemesis and next-door neighbour, which should take place some time tomorrow. And Act IV will be Brown's coronation in the summer.

The fact that it was written so far in advance gives some indication of how much the British people have been excluded from the whole process. This is no morality play. The rivalry between the two men has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with personal ambition--the denouement of a decade of midlife crisis played out on the international stage. This morning was the decisive moment because now there can be no turning back.

Blair is the first British leader to leave without having been ousted by his own party or the voters. In truth, he jumped before he was pushed. Iraq alienated him from his Labour base while a new generation of Tory leader started to win back disaffected Conservatives and woo the center. He had become a liability.

But Brown will inherit a tarnished crown. The local election results bear witness to a deep-seated disaffection among the electorate. Interest rates are going up. Iraq is not going away. The electorate want a change in policies. Instead they are getting a change in personnel. The best thing Brown could do is withdraw British troops from Iraq immediately. That would establish a break with the past and be a popular move. It is also unlikely.

The best thing that the Labour party could do is produce a viable candidate with an alternative, progressive agenda to challenge Brown's ascendancy. This is also unlikely.

With its democratic levers broken and what is left of its membership utterly depressed the party has become not a place of ideas but an electoral machine--much like the Democrats.

So the actors change but the narrative trajectory remains the same--a long-scripted and long-running tragedy.

Comments (11)

1. Your writing, Mr. Younge, makes me appreciate David Brooks' rationale for being an Anglophile: the prescient insight(s) of the UK's thinkers.

   Posted by lewwelge at 05/10/2007 @ 09:25am

2. What will it take, I wonder, for British Progressives to be able to win power? The British public is not quite as forgiving of its politicians as Americans are, and I have to believe that with a political party so far fallen as Labour some group of Progressives will get it into their heads that now is the time to coalesce into a party to be reckoned with.

   Posted by ARCHANGEL_M at 05/10/2007 @ 09:27am

3. Brown has also been mouthing platitudes and introducing tax incentives for green issues that have been intended to cast him as a 'Good Guy', despite his complete lack of empathy or even understanding of what the British public, who've suffered from increasing apathy regarding the democratic process in the UK, are looking for. Forget the interest rate hikes, and consider the mounting burden of debt and the inability for a couple to buy their first home due to an overheated housing market.

   "much like the Democrats."

   If this refers to the Liberal Democrats, then they're rapidly becoming the second party to balance the Conservatives, who will still suffer from the memories of the 1970s and 80s and the war that occurred to pull the teeth of the Unions.

   If you're referring to the US Democrats, then you've failed to look into the policies being put forward by the presidential candidates, which leaves the republicans looking green while flogging the dead horses of religious conservatism and 'family values'. I wish that the UK could become energised about the political process to the extent that the US is.

   Posted by Draconis at 05/10/2007 @ 09:28am

4. Go to Hell Tony Blair and George Bush. Tony Blair gets his $4 million a year job over at the Carlyle Group - he gets to go off and live in luxury for the rest of his life. But you cant buy honor, you cant buy dignity, you cant buy back what you sold Tony Blair - you will live out the rest of your life under this foul cloud that you created. Dragging your country into a Hell based on lies, lying to the world, saying Al Qaida is being run by Saddam Hussein. You failed to go after Osama Bin Laden, you failed to stand up to George Bush, you sold out your country and you deserve the abiding hatred of generations of the entire world for what you have done.

   Posted by conshame at 05/10/2007 @ 11:02am

5. So, I thought this was kind of strange:

   The fact that it was written so far in advance gives some indication of how much the British people have been excluded from the whole process. This is no morality play. The rivalry between the two men has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with personal ambition--the denouement of a decade of midlife crisis played out on the international stage.

   This argument is really silly. Mr. Younge spends time pointing out how Labour has lost large numbers of seats due to public dissatisfaction, and proceeds to argue that the public really has no say in British politics at all! This claim is also bizarre given that changes in the hands of power do take place in British politics, and often in direct response to issues that the people have with policies that the government is pursuing.

   Posted by Thrawn at 05/10/2007 @ 12:08pm

6. Accepting in his resignation speach that some of the decisions he made might not have been the right ones is as close as we're likely to get to an admission that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a mistake. I give him some credit in having the humility to go that far.

   Future comforts are likely to be little comfort to his conscience. He'll deservedly be gnawed by it for the remainder of his life.

   Posted by inveresk at 05/10/2007 @ 12:18pm

7. Boy, don't you know Bush is envious of Blair. Though it probably won't sell any better here than in the UK, he can TRY to blame the eventual pull-out and any resulting disaster in Iraq on Brown.

   Same for Bush, if he can "play out the clock" and keep us in Iraq until January 20, 2009.

   Posted by Mask at 05/10/2007 @ 12:43pm

8. nothing speaks to the testimony of true leadership than a consensus of ill will from the left.

   Thank you Tony Blair for your leadership. I may disagree with some of your positions (especially on the Palestinians) but you have been a sound and decisive leader and a true friend to America.

   Posted by lvliberty1 at 05/10/2007 @ 3:52pm

9. Solid as always, my brother !

   Posted by enid lee at 05/13/2007 @ 4:42pm

10. "This argument is really silly."

    Not if you're British.

    "Mr. Younge spends time pointing out how Labour has lost large numbers of seats due to public dissatisfaction, and proceeds to argue that the public really has no say in British politics at all! "

    Policy is decided on without input from the British public other than the cyclical local and national elections; certainly the next leader of the Labour party and by inference the next prime minister will be handled internally by the party. With regard to many changes, they're 'spun' to the public to provide an rough inkling of the consequences, but we're _told_ what's good for us.

    So we have the largest quantity of close circuit cameras in Europe, a situation where you're compelled to admit to guilt without recourse to a trial in the case of fixed penalty speed cameras, and a steady erosion of our healthcare system through a steady alignment with the broken American model of healthcare.

    "This claim is also bizarre given that changes in the hands of power do take place in British politics, and often in direct response to issues that the people have with policies that the government is pursuing."

    Rubbish. ID Cards have been lubricated through the government process despite long and sustained effort to remove them in favour of upgrading passports and other forms of pre-existing ID by invoking 'terrorism'. What is going on in the background in information sharing by governmental and commercial enterprises to make it easier to extract, locate and datamine individual citizens.

    When you contact a local MP, they explain why your standpoint is wrong rather than trying to represent your views. My local MP, before his deposition by Liberal Democrats, defended Blair's record on the war by echoing American Republican talking points.

    Quite frankly I've gotten sick with being America's backyard, so I'm emigrating to the States.

    Posted by Draconis at 05/15/2007 @ 06:17am

11. "Tony Blair should go on trial as a minor war criminal."

    We keep trying.

    "British government's inability to give up its older past as a monarchy, of the British government's willingness to sacrifice the interests and desires of its own people to serve the US, as a demonstration of Britain's inability to get past its own heritage as a colonial power."

    Wow. Britain is a constitutional monarchy, meanign that ultimate power lies with the crown to veto to the decisions of parliment, but there's an unspoken agreement that the crown stays out of politics, and we don't behead any more of them. So Britain does not have a past as a Monarchy, it is a Monarchy. Parliment consists of the commons and the Lords, through which all laws have to pass. Lords used to be made up of hereditory peers, but is now made up with people 'of character', although there's a current scandal that those seats have been 'sold' by Labour for campaign contributions. The commons are the elected representatives.

    Regarding the 'colonial power'; if that were indeed true, then we wouldn't be doing what the US asked us to. An inability to 'get over' the British Empire isn't really a problem as we've seen the damage that we did worldwide as well as the contributions in a pythonesque 'what have the British ever done for us' fashion. While your stab at history was a brave attempt, it fails to realise that the current middle-eastern adventure has it's roots firmly in the last two decades rather than the Victorian British Empire.

    Posted by Draconis at 05/15/2007 @ 06:30am