Blair's path to victory

Blair has won a historic second Labour victory

By Robin Oakley, CNN's European Political Editor

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Tony Blair’s victory in the UK general election with the party he refashioned as “New Labour” is a stunning achievement.

No Labour government has ever before served two full terms in office; Blair has a victory margin to ensure that this one will.

The election was won less during the four-week election campaign than in the four years that preceded it. Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown always had that second-term target in mind, and they proceeded with caution.

They knew that Labour had to avoid both any semblance of an economic crisis as well as the industrial troubles with recalcitrant trade unions that helped to bring down the last Labour government. They ensured that they did, despite a wobble over fuel prices when protesters took to the streets in September 2000.

Blair has admitted that there was one question still outstanding when Conservative splits on Europe and a series of sleaze scandals helped to topple the Tories in 1997.

It was: “Can Labour be trusted to run the economy?”

Thanks to a fair economic legacy from the Major government and Brown’s tight-fistedness over public spending in Labour's first two years, they proved that they could.

By handing over control of interest rates to the independent Bank of England within days of their 1997 victory and keeping their pledges not to raise either the standard or higher rates of income tax, Brown and Blair won the confidence of the business community, even if it chafed at some of their regulation and what the Conservatives called their 45 “stealth taxes.”

By instituting a national minimum wage and the working families tax credit for low-income earners, by pressing on with devolutionary parliaments and assemblies for Scotland and Wales, and by successfully prosecuting a war in Kosovo, they proved their strength of purpose as a government.

The main blot was the alienation of some voters in rural areas with apparent insensitivity to their needs, with the mishandling the hunting issue and some blunders over the containment of the foot-and-mouth epidemic.

Despite that, with employment at a record high and interest and mortgage rates low, election victory was assured. There was no reason to hate the New Labour government as the Tories had been hated over the poll tax.

In the campaign itself, Labour concentrated relentlessly and almost exclusively on the message that it had ended the years of boom and bust and stabilised the economy so that in its second term it could boost Britain’s crumbled public services by pumping money into health, education and transport.

Day after day the prime minister and chancellor emphasised the extra 10,000 doctors and teachers and 20,000 nurses they would provide, together with a £180 billion ($240 billion) plan for transport improvements over the next decade.

To counter this, William Hague and the Conservatives relied on playing two cards -- tax cuts and the euro.

Despite an effective poster campaign before the campaign opened inquiring “You’ve paid the taxes, now where are the operations (or the policemen or the teachers)?” they never settled to a consistent pattern of attack on the area where Labour was weakest -- its delivery so far on public services.

The Conservatives tried to make ground on violent crime, on political asylum -- dubbing the Labour government “a soft touch” -- and on tax scares, such as the suggestion that a re-elected Labour government would abolish the ceiling on National Insurance contributions, in effect introducing a 50 percent tax rate.

But they were forced on the defensive over tax cuts when front-bencher Oliver Letwin briefed the Financial Times newspaper that they really planned not the declared £8 billion ($12 billion) of tax cuts but £20 billion ($30 billion). That, said Labour, would mean severe cutbacks in public services.

The Conservatives’ constant chopping and changing of targets ensured that few of their attacks carried weight. Polls showed the public happier by far at the thought of Labour continuing to run the economy.

The prominence of Lady Thatcher in the Tory campaign reminded people why they had voted out the Conservatives in 1997. And the Tories' expected trump card, the euro, failed to register.

Hague, who had scored a success in similar tactics in the European Parliament elections in 1999, insisted that the election was “the last chance to save the pound.”

Blair insisted it was not, and that a referendum would be held if Labour did decide to recommend entry into the euro during the new Parliament. The people believed Blair.

In an ICM poll listing 11 issues that people saw as influencing how they would vote, joining the euro came 11th.

With British elections becoming ever more presidential, Hague himself remained the choice of just 14 percent, compared with 51 percent who saw Blair as the best available prime minister.

For the Tories, a reduction in Labour’s majority was the only realistic target in the 2001 election.

Their failure to make more progress this time means that they face a long haul in opposition and much rethinking of their message if they are once again to contest the centre ground of British politics, where most elections are won.