In the introduction to his magnum opus Rescuing Justice and Equality, the great egalitarian political philosopher GA Cohen tells how his Oxford superviser Gilbert Ryle always said that with any intellectual investigation ‘you rescue something from something’.
It would hardly surprise readers of his column were John Rentoul, chief political commentator of the Independent on Sunday (and my departmental colleague at Queen Mary University London), attempting precisely such a rescue mission with this republication of his magisterial 2001 biography of Tony Blair. Because neither current party sentiment nor the canon of political memoirs that publicly laundered New Labour’s dirty linen has helped the legacy of Labour’s longest-serving prime minister.
Aging gracefully, however, is not a problem to have befallen this book. In terms of historical usefulness it contributes far more than the offerings of Peter Mandelson and colleagues, which, though fascinating, are constrained by their participants’ status.
Of course, there are the ‘pre-drafts of history’ contained in Alastair Campbell’s diaries or the salacious entertainment of Andrew Rawnsley’s End of the Party. But Rentoul, bringing his unique skillset to bear, stands alone in offering an account that operates at the intersection between journalism’s ‘first draft’ and the sober, partial yet dispassionate analysis of a historian.
As such, Tony Blair: Prime Minister is meticulously researched with an analysis both forensic and extensive. Rentoul also possesses an impressive knowledge of both the nuances of late 20th century political combat and the collective neuroses of the Labour party – minutiae that will surely elude later biographers. Furthermore, in painstakingly piecing together the fragments of Blair’s long journey from his relatively orthodox ‘soft-left’ incarnation of the early 1980s to the radical revisionist that ascended to the Labour leadership, he has surely come closer than anyone else to pinning down the credo of arguably Britain’s most intellectually elusive prime minister. For that much alone, this book commands attention.
Perhaps inevitably, however, it is the new post-2001 afterword that is most compelling. Front and centre, as it should be, is Iraq, with Rentoul concluding a brilliant, warts-and-all analysis with the simple exhortation that in the context of so much bloodshed how could the Iraqi people rationally answer the question ‘was it worth it?’
He could just as easily have been talking about the Labour party. And it is here that the content of his rescue is revealed. Because, until the Labour party is able to engage in a rational conversation about the issue that defined him, it is unlikely to be able to assess the true merits of Blair’s legacy.
But, as so beautifully demonstrated by Margaret Thatcher’s funeral, political legacies have a unique and unnerving ability to shape the future. With its ludicrous attempt to beatify Thatcher as a unifying prime minister, the Conservative party merely demonstrated its continuing inability to assess her legacy with anything like the balance needed to gain political closure. If and when the Labour party is ready to do that with Blair, Rentoul has provided the definitive starting point.
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Tristram Hunt MP is a vice-chair of Progress
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Tony Blair: Prime Minister
John Rentoul
Faber Finds | 696pp | £20