POLLY TOYNBEE and MICHAEL WHITE

May 29, 2001

Election 2001

'Some feel betrayed - but many are delighted'

Does Tony Blair understand the dire position of many aspects of Britain? Yes, he says, but a steady improvement will solve the problems. Interview by Polly Toynbee and Michael White.

Complaints about the dire state of British society and its public services are much exaggerated, Tony Blair said yesterday. Its best primary schools and top universities are still world leaders. Even the NHS "at its best works as well as anything else in Europe", the prime minister insisted.

For long-suffering patients, commuters and parents such confidence must invite the question: Does Mr Blair get it? That is a recurring concern on his campaign flight to Teesside international airport and a quick bank holiday visit to his Sedgefield constituency. The tempting answer is No, he does not get it, though Mr Blair dismisses charges of complacency.

Foreign correspondents in London send home bulletins of a nation falling further behind - trains that would shame the third world, farming in pyres, schools and hospitals tumbling down the league tables with the gap between the rich and poor widening.

Germany's Stern magazine devoted 12 pages last week to a dismal portrait of a nation on the verge of a major collapse. But the prime minister thinks such tales of Britain's demise much exaggerated. He acknowledges some problems, not their daunting scale.

His remedy is that steady Blairite improvement will be enough. Britain has suffered too much from Conservative boom and bust. What it needs now is "good steady progress" under the rules laid down by his friend, Gordon Brown.

Sitting beside Cherie on the flight to Middlesbrough yesterday (with Euan Blair and a chum seated quietly across the aisle), he is now 20 points ahead in the polls. It must be impossible to fight off complacency all the time, and he does not always succeed.

Delighted
"There are groups of people who feel very strongly that we've betrayed what the Labour party stood for. They will not be pleased with the government. But I have to tell you when I go round I meet a lot of party members who are absolutely delighted that at long last they have a got a sensible Labour party that believes in business enterprise but also believes in social justice."

He rattles off a long-standing Labour wish list, from the minimum wage and stronger union rights, to help for pensioners and the New Deal for young unemployed. Mrs Blair, who has not had Ffion Hague's opportunity to hear the campaign speech 50 times, nods vigorously throughout.

Alarmists in the press are partly to blame. Foreign reporting is "just the backwash of our press coverage". He cites British successes : "Look where Britain is now, the fourth largest economy, look where our unemployment is, where our youth unemployment is. Sure there are lots of problems with the NHS. We are trying to put them right but I wouldn't swap our national health service with many systems that operate abroad."

Though quite where abroad, first or third world, he does not say. Mr Blair is aware that the new French high-speed train, the TGV, this week broke new records on the Paris-Marseilles run. He admits that in transport the unflattering comparison is "most vivid".

"It's absolutely clear that if you under-invest you end up with a poor system which is what we've got. But you've got to be careful of exaggeration here. There are people from abroad who come and look at our primary school system. Our top universities are still among the best, if not the best, in Europe. We have in fact very, very good secondary schools in parts of the country. The health service at its best works as well as anything else in Europe."

The way he sees it, Britain has had "two big problems" - the rail crisis and foot and mouth. On the latter, "the pictures sent abroad have been ghastly for tourism because lots of people are coming here expecting to see burning pyres on every street corner, in every village, which is not the case".

He seems genuinely angry at suggestions that the true scale of the outbreak - 3,000 cases rather than the 1,600 reported - is being suppressed for electoral reasons. "The figures are not being fiddled."

So are farmers themselves to blame for the latest outbreak in the Yorkshire dales? Mr Blair does not quite say in so many words. But, as with his oblique strictures on the far right stirring up racial tensions in Oldham, his meaning is clear. "It's not that people are accusing farmers. It's that the way this disease is spread is, on the whole, by farm-to-farm movements."

He warned against saying everything is bad in Britain but kept off the broad statistics that show time and again that decades of higher taxation has lead to higher standards everywhere else.

Steady was the word : "The basic point is yes, we have under-invested and we have got to make good that under-investment, but it takes time and it has got to be a steady process, because you must not spend money you don't have."

Suggest that the money already laid out might not be enough or that the Institute for Fiscal Studies might be right to say only higher taxation will fill the gap to get us up to EU average spending and the prime minister dismisses this crunch problem with an airy wave of the hand.

"The way we've done it so far is through the strength of the economy, reducing unemployment and benefit claims significantly. Remember on these issues, we are ahead of the rest of Europe. Then making sure we keep our national debt down. I know people treat this as rhetoric, but it's not. It means about £5bn a year extra, which is a lot of public spending."

Pushed about figures that suggest the next spending round will need extra cash, he denied it. "That is what they said last time." He preferred instead just to compare Labour and Conservative policies.

"Look, this is the choice in this election. Our case is that schools and hospitals come first. The Tory case, in the end, is that short-term tax cuts come first. That is what this whole election is about, because they want £20bn cut. No one believes you can cut a few civil servants and get this money. You would have to take it out of the schools and hospitals programme."

However, with the Tories out of the running, the only question left worth asking is by how much can Labour improve services. Why rule out income tax increases, the fairest and easiest way to raise extra money when it is needed?

"We made the commitment because it is the commitment we made last time and also because I don't believe the trend, not just here but around the world, is in favour of raising income tax, because of the disincentives that are involved. We have some of the lowest tax levels of any major country in Europe."

With every word, Mr Blair hammers on the head any idea that there would be some radical change of direction in a second term. What we see now is what we get then. More of the same, steady progress, no horse-frightening, New Labour as before.

The one notable difference of emphasis in the 2001 campaign is Mr Blair's emphasis on the need for more private sector management in the mix which is meant to revitalise state schools and health care. But no, even here he stresses continuity with the 1997 New Labour model.

"Every time you raise these things you always get the same reaction. It was the same reaction to the PFI (the private finance initiative which is building up to 60 NHS hospitals), to the idea of private sector consortia taking over health authorities and schools which weren't working, the same reaction to city academies.

"You've got to overcome this resistance. You've got to show people that it is delivering public services within the public sector, not charging for them, but delivering in a better way."

Does it worry him that so many Labour people are dispirited? Who loves this government with the passion that Margaret Thatcher was loved by her own people? "I don't think the function of government is to be loved," he replies.

"Under Mrs Thatcher that was sometimes done at the expense of dividing other people. I think there are people who would like me to take a very divisive line from the left of centre but that's not me. I will always pursue political change in a way that tries to bring people together."

His forces of conservatism speech was "wilfully misunderstood" by those hoping it signified a good old tribal conflict. No ideology, no tribalism here, in contrast to the Tories who nowadays heckle his campaign meetings along with the Trots, he reports. "We have become the practical party, pursuing perfectly idealistic objectives in a measured and non-dogmatic way." He is convinced it is what people want.

If the election is not about ideology - though it is, he says, about idealism - it is not about the euro either. He is adamant that he has not run away from the question : another media myth.

"The euro is a subject for another day. It's not the issue of the election. I think on the issue of Europe there is every chance that we can get across the argument that is it extremely important for us to be inside Europe - 60% of our trade, 3m jobs depend on it."

Beneath the surface of the campaign people understand that, he believes. "That is why when people talk about apathy in this election it's superficial and stupid - to be apathetic about decisions as big as this."

As the plane dips towards Teesside airport, he mentions Arthur Scargill and his supporters heckling him alongside the Tories. It prompts the question: since we are so close to Hartlepool will he drop by to help the Labour candidate, a Mr Mandelson, against the Scargill challenge?

"I hardly think it's necessary for me. He's doing very well there." In this, as in much else, Mr Blair talks like a man on top of the situation.