Old Tory vs. New Labor

...They grant that Labor leader Tony Blair has found acceptance among many Tories and, more important, among members of the business community...

...Despite his Tom Hanks looks and relentless grin, he is the most forceful leader the party has had since Clement Attlee...

...Major shows no signs of doing so, happy as this might make his party's Euroskeptics...

...Major seems hexed...

...The controversy set off in early spring by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy —initially discovered in cattle here in the 1980s and now feared to be infecting humans—has not only been a source of turmoil for British ranchers and McDonald's franchises...

...It need never have become a serious economic problem, a contentious international concern and a public relations fiasco for the Conservative Party, whose leaders responded to the emergent crises by contradicting themselves and each other...

...Whatever it was, even though Whitehall played no role in the decision, it was one more thing chalked up against it...

...And there are fissures in Labor's ranks that may grow damagingly wide in the months ahead...

...Member of Parliament Peter Man-delson...

...Finally, they allow that a new spirit has been injected into that old dray horse once used in tabloid cartoons to caricature Labor...

...Sherwood Forest's legendary champion of the oppressed was rejected as a has-been no longer capable of attracting tourists...

...They concede that at the moment Labor shows no sign of losing the 30 per cent lead it has enjoyed for months in the polls...

...If the Tories decided to take that path, the natural conservatism of the British public could come to their rescue on election day...

...After 17 consecutive years in power, the British Conservatives are groggy with fatigue and accident-prone...

...New Labor BY NORMAN GELB LONDON IN THIS COUNTRY where the guardians of the Tower of London are called Beefeaters, a popular gin label bears their name and likeness, the traditional Sunday lunch is roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and hamburgers have supplanted fish 'n' chips as the fast food of choice, "mad cow" disease can have maddening political consequences...

...EU countries have agreed that the European Commission will absorb 70 per cent of the cost of dealing with the various aspects of the mad cow problem...

...Yet it should not have surprised him that the "act of God" excuse didn't get his ruling Tories off the hook...

...On Northern Ireland, Blair has offered much more generous backing than Labor previously did for the government's determination to face down the Irish Republican Army...

...He continues to defend European economic integration as essential to the health of the British economy...

...Under his tutelage, Labor is becoming as dynamic a middle-of-the-road political force as anyone but an extreme Tory or a doctrinaire Socialist could wish for...

...Doctrine is out, pragmatism is in—and it is being called statesmanship...

...Mandelson is not bothered by claims that New Labor sometimes sounds very much like Old Tory...

...To add spice to the equation, they have taken to speculating whether the election's outcome is really a foregone conclusion...

...And they might very well conclude that he would not hesitate to use the only arrow left in his quiver...

...The Blair Revolution declares that it "is only through Britain's committed participation in the European Union that we can regain true sovereignty...

...Blair cannot expect to always be obeyed by Labor mavericks, but he apparently will insist on it anyway...

...It would be a long shot, and would almost surely alienate the party's Europhiles...

...The Conservatives have yet to fully unleash their traditionally potent anti-Labor rhetoric...

...To understand New Labor and its economic and social program, one need look no farther than The Blair Revolution, a book coauthored by Roger Liddle and the party leader's chief public relations adviser...

...Everybody knew from the media that with a little decisiveness any potential health threat could have been eliminated when the disease was first detected...

...Whenever he manages to make headway against embarrassments with a strong speech, or benefits from a Labor opposition faux pas, something—often of little real significance—cuts the ground from under him...

...Nevertheless, as political columnist (and bestselling novelist) Robert Harris has put it, there exists between them "a love that dare not speak its name...

...An omen...

...Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine has publicly gloated that in building his own business fortune he used any excuse he could think of to delay paying his bills...

...The Tories could pounce on that Or-wellian logic, condemning it as a willingness to debase Britain's unique identity by fully merging the nation into an amorphous, German-dominated supranational economic and political entity...

...Indeed, the clumsy handling of the affair fit an already established pattern suggesting that Major and his Cabinet have lost control of almost every controversial issue of national significance...

...Talk of a "Lib-Lab" coalition is dismissed by both sides...

...closed down due to foreign competition...

...On the other hand, with opinion polls relentlessly indicating that they seem doomed to defeat, the Conservatives might wonder what poor Robin Hood would have done in such a tight spot...

...If the two parties choose to work together, they could probably form a government even if the Tories somehow managed to get as many votes as they did in the last balloting...

...BARRING A SURPRISE mood swing in Britain, one issue remains that might save the Tories from electoral disaster: national sovereignty...

...Like so many real people across this land, Robin, his merry men and Maid Marian were declared redundant...

...Amid a seemingly endless string of complaints that has plagued the ostensibly reformed National Health Service— though on the whole it still functions well—some critically ill patients were scandalously mistreated and several died while being shunted from one under-equipped hospital to another...

...At a time when businesses are struggling with cash flow difficulties...

...A symbol...

...Few analysts believe Labor will be able to sustain its enormous lead once the campaign—normally no more than six weeks long—gets cracking...

...New Labor" is more than simply a vote-getting catchphrase...

...Although the British public tired of the Iron Lady's nanny-ing, it seems to approve of the Labor leader's firm leadership...

...He has outraged Left-controlled local Labor branches and trade unions by reducing their influence within the party...

...In recent times no British party has won a national election with more than a plurality of the popular vote, the lion's share of which has been divided unevenly among the Conservatives, Labor and the smaller Liberal Democratic Party...

...Neither is Blair...

...In the past, warnings regarding high taxes, trade union control and loony Leftism have been used to withering effect...

...They could issue alarmist statements about how Blair and the New Labor crowd would ignore the people's wishes and replace the pound sterling with the much mocked pan-European Euro, sell out independent British justice to a clutch of foreign judges, downgrade Britain's Parliament in favor of a multilingual talking shop in Strasbourg, and undermine the royal family even more than it has undermined itself through marital scandals...

...The British are thus being presented with the prospect of a change even some Conservatives desire but cannot themselves provide...

...Just ask the Prime Minister...

...Normally dependable Health Secretary Stephen Dorrell, trying to defuse the beef crisis, instead came off as uncaring when he told a worried populace that the problem was not mad cows but "mad people...

...But Conservative Party leaders could ultimately backtrack on their current Europe policy and fly the Union Jack with a vengeance in the campaign...

...Major could not help being unhappy about the ghoulish way the matter hogged newspaper headlines, radio reports and TV panel discussions...

...Gone are socialism's shibboleths...

...Labor is committed to having the country play a full and active role in the ongoing development of the EU...

...Consider the following examples of their bumbling: • The search for a modus vivendi with the European Union (EU) that would allow Britain to retain greater sovereignty than other EU members has repeatedly been frustrated by hard-core Tory Eu-roskeptics...

...In contrast to the party's earlier special sympathy for single mothers, "New Labor recognizes the importance of the family unit as a social institution for the proper bringing-up of children...

...A LABOR PARTY victory seems so certain that some pundits have grown bored forecasting it...

...Recently, for instance, just as he embarked on yet another crusade to convince Britons they have much to be proud of, the Council of Nottingham decided it no longer required the services of Robin Hood in its publicity campaigns...

...They do whatever they can to convince the Eurocrats in Brussels that no deal with Britain can be trusted...

...Like the Tories, the Labor leader pledges to promote business enterprise to stimulate the economy, to improve alarmingly sagging educational standards in the schools, and to be tough on crime...

...Still, no one denies that Blair has seized the political high ground...

...When Labor MP John Austin-Walker defiantly spoke at a Sinn Fein conference, he was reprimanded and required to apologize for flouting the party line...

...For the moment...

...Britain's Railtrack Authority, about to be privatized by the Tories, embarrassingly advised its employees to travel by car on future operational assignments because it might be cheaper than taking the train...

...New Labor," say the authors, "firmly rejects the notion that centralized planning and state control are the route to economic success...

...Rather than promising to reverse unpopular yet necessary Conservative measures to cut public spending, Blair says he will more sensibly execute Tory-instituted National Health Service reforms and privatization of the railroads and public utilities...

...Blair makes it clear to everyone—Laborites included—that if he is the next Prime Minister Britain will be a very different place than it has ever been...

...Paddy Ashdown and his Liberal Democratic followers guard their separate political existence jealously, but they share many of New Labor's positions as well as its disdain for the Tories...

...It's as if they seek the very respite the British voters threaten to foist upon them as early as this autumn or, if Major holds on to his ever slimmer majority in the House of Commons, next spring at the latest...

...In an ill-conceived effort to save a huge Saudi defense contract, the government tried—unsuccessfully—to expel Dr...

...It is not only the Blair phenomenon that makes Major's position so precarious, however...

...There is a touch of Margaret Thatcher in his selfcentered determination...

...Nevertheless, they note that Blair could suffer the fate of former Opposition leader Neil Kinnock (now the EU Commissioner for Transport), who appeared headed for easy victory in 1987 but was convincingly trounced by the Tories...

...He has further offended Labor Left-wingers by refusing to say that other once publicly owned industries will be rena-tionalized...

...where a sense of mutual obligation is founded and practiced...

...It is also at least partly to blame for John Major's inability to promote the "feel good factor" that is vital if his ailing government is to stand a chance in the upcoming national elections...

...Muhammad al-Masari, a Saudi dissident critical of the Riyadh regime who has applied for political asylum...

...On a recent visit to the north of England, Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke seemed unaware that the factory he was praising as proof of the nation's keeping up with technology had NORMAN GELB reports regularly for The New Leader on British affairs...