Friends In Need

It was an encore performance of one of the great buddy acts of the 1990s — all smiles but with a deadly serious purpose. The Tony-and-Bill Show, which ran for two days last week in the gloriously tacky seaside resort of Blackpool, had just about everyone at the Labour Party conference cheering and stomping and forgetting, at least for a while, about all the issues — privatization, civil liberties, war against Iraq — where so many Labourites have profound disagreements with Tony Blair.

These annual rituals are a funny mix of theater, trading floor and reunion. You can see Cabinet ministers getting buttonholed by irate local officials or chatting amiably about former Prime Minister John Major’s sex scandal as they prop up the bar the night before their big speeches. Once the scene of brutal factional brawls, the conference in Blair’s era has been systematically drained of strife. So this year two things were striking: that Blair came in for something of a rough ride, and that old-fashioned oratory, from Blair and then his special guest Bill Clinton, mesmerized the dissenters.

Like any good two-man performance, it had its own careful rhythm: setup and payoff, stern and then sunny. The serious bit came early in the session, after delegates, by a 2-to-1 margin, rebuked Blair for his plans to deliver more public services with private contractors. Chastened he was not. The Prime Minister promised even more privatization, in a keynote speech that confirmed that while he may not be emotionally of the Labour Party, he undoubtedly commands it. Playing the role of paterfamilias, seldom smiling, he exhorted delegates to shed their quaint affection for the one-size-fits-all welfare state, which he argued cannot deliver services that satisfy voters raised in an era of consumer choice. Without saying much of anything about how he planned to reform services, he painted his quest to do so as heroic: “The radical decision is usually the right one. The right decision is usually the hardest one. And the hardest decisions are often the least popular at the time. We are at our best when at our boldest.” His basic message: I will do what I think best. Illogically, it brought the house down.

Which was nothing compared to the tumult Clinton sparked. His rock-star magnetism lives: everywhere he went, delegates mobbed him to get a handshake or an autograph, and just like old times, he charmed the locals on a late-night run to McDonald’s. After warmup music that included (to sniggers from the audience) Kiss Me and Uptown Girl, his speech was a TelePrompter-free tour de force that gave crucial support to Blair on his other exposed flank — Iraq.

All week delegates had been voicing unease about George W. Bush’s push toward war and what Blair admitted was a “fear it’s being done for the wrong motives.” They didn’t like being out of the European mainstream, which was summed up in the “total hostility” French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder declared toward the U.S. draft of a U.N. resolution that would automatically authorize war if Saddam Hussein stymies weapons inspectors. Forty percent of Labour delegates backed a rebel motion denouncing any use of force ever. Clinton got some digs in at Bush for disdaining allies and international institutions. But he forcefully backed Blair and Bush in seeking a tough U.N. resolution aiming to “call Saddam’s bluff” on inspections. While not enthusiastic about a U.S.-British attack without U.N. approval, he asked delegates to support Blair as he wrestles with hard choices — “If he was not there to [unite America and Europe], I doubt if anyone else could.” His argument was perfectly tuned to his audience in a way Bush has seldom managed outside the U.S. It won a delirious ovation, and Blair some freedom to maneuver.

That was a gift the Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, who opens his party’s conference this week, could only envy. An NOP poll shows the Tories 13 points behind Labour and Duncan Smith himself less attractive to voters as a potential Prime Minister than either Blair or Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democratic leader who hopes to replace the Tories as main opposition party at the next election. In his year running the Tories, Duncan Smith has fired his party chairman, lost his director of strategy and found no coherent line of attack. His latest burden is the revelation that Major, the last Tory Prime Minister, had a four-year affair in the 1980s with Edwina Currie, a boisterous former Health Minister — and tabloid reporters are on the hunt for other women who may have seen Major’s blue underpants. This has revived memories of the Tories’ bad old days of lurid scandals interspersed with pious calls for higher moral standards.

Michael Ancram, the Tories’ deputy leader, says his boss will focus on bread-and-butter issues like hospitals and crime where voters think Labour has overpromised. “We want to make a very careful case about how we can actually deliver services that will provide people the choice they need,” he says. But the Tories’ running room is tiny. Duncan Smith is even more pro-Bush than Blair, which is not popular. In pushing privatization of public services, Blair has already appropriated the Tories’ home turf. A global recession or a mess in Iraq could make Labour vulnerable, but Duncan Smith does not seem the man to seize the day. His supporters talk up the virtues of his stolid decency. But as the Bill and Tony Show proves, razzmatazz still matters.