To begin with an incontrovertible fact: no Labour leader since the birth of the party a century ago has enjoyed such good fortune as Tony Blair both in relation to the state of H.M. Opposition or, flowing from this, the general attitude and temper of the still mostly Tory-inclined, national press. And you can add to that the regional press which, for the most part, has also uniquely shown a willingness to give a Labour Prime Minister the benefit of most doubts – even allowing for periodic crises in the health service, the schools, transport, the European question, the farming crisis and, of course, the extraordinary story of Peter Mandelson. Even so, nothing like this happened when Clem Attlee was Prime Minister, nor under Harold Wilson apart from a very brief honeymoon at the start; certainly not while Jim Callaghan was at the helm, nor even when Hugh Gaitskell was leader, though he probably edged closer than anyone to the kind of media acceptance that Tony Blair now enjoys. And, if you wish to go back still further it certainly never happened to Ramsay MacDonald even after he deserted the Labour Party. Tony Blair has changed all this. He has forced the media moguls to reconsider, amend and in some cases overturn the old rules of the press game as far as Labour – all right then, New Labour – is concerned.

He has done so with great skill by pursuing “Middle England” policies, by a special combination of moderate, liberal-style, non-abrasive politics and by searching for, and claiming to have discovered, a formula for a new coalition of interests capable of bracketing the rich and the modestly well off, the top layers of society along with the middle classes as well as a new working class. Blair has moved across a broad sweep of the age and gender range with remarkable success. More than any previous Labour leader in the party’s history he has hinged himself to the successes of capitalism. And by periodic, judicious confessions of human fallibility he has impressed even his opponents. Perhaps, most of all, by turning his back on many of the old Labour Party shibboleths, in search of a desperate respectability, the Prime Minister has demonstrated his immunity from the storage of old baggage. He has never allowed the word “socialism” to enter his text. And amid all this it would appear he has been able to overcome the often clumsy news-management of his over-obsessive entourage. This is a remarkable achievement and it has been recognised, by and large, by the old enemies of Labour – the proprietors of the mainly Conservative national newspapers. Now comes the crucial question: can it last? What will the Murdochs, the Conrad Blacks, the Rothermeres and come to that Mr Desmond, do on polling day? Will they confess – as privately they now mostly do – that there is no alternative? That despite their reservations about Blair or about Gordon Brown and most of all about Europe, there really is no serious option but to support Blair, even though they still harbour deeper doubts. Will they do that? And if in the main they do decide to back a continuation of Blair’s New Labour will they stick to it?

Containment

It is the one factor that offers William Hague and his team some solace. We can be sure that the Telegraph, Sun, Mail et al. will not abandon their defence of sterling. They know, even without market research, that this is the one major issue on which Blair is vulnerable and Hague can score. Yet it is already clear that Blair will try to defuse the Euro question by repeating all the usual qualifications against joining the Euro [as well as listing the advantages] and repeating his pledge to hold a referendum… eventually, but not immediately. So where does this leave the Prime Minister’s relations with the media moguls, particularly those he has sought to indulge and schmooze over the last four years? He will not, of course, abandon that strategy. He wouldn’t want to and Alastair Campbell wouldn’t let him. Yet Blair and Campbell almost certainly now have far fewer illusions about their “friends” among the newspaper barons. There are already some clues that Blair’s thinking has shifted. In a television interview with David Frost on January 7 this year – his first major TV interview of the election campaign – Mr. Blair was asked what had been his most significant lesson from four years in Downing Street. He replied: “That you cannot please all the people all the time”. That, surely, was a statement of considerable significance. The Prime Minister appeared to be saying that he would stick to what he believed was right in the national interest even if it offended some groups. Does that declaration of principle include the media moguls? It would have to in order to make any real sense. Has the Prime Minister now reached a point of self-confidence – or, perhaps, will have reached it if he wins the election – where he can afford to cock a snook at the Murdochs, the Blacks and the Rothermeres? Again, we simply don’t know the answer. Clearly very much will ultimately depend on the size of Blair’s majority.

But if the answer is “yes” then Tony Blair will take on a big gamble. A welcome gamble, to be sure, though he must know it would test to the full his relationship with the non-Labour press, nationally and regionally. He would need to remember how quickly and easy his new-found friends savaged him and the Government last autumn during the petrol crisis. He would need to remember how casually some newspapers can trample on old friends – even in the Tory Party – when they fail to toe the prescribed Mogul line. He will certainly remember the wild glee with which most newspapers, and not just the Tory ones, greeted the fall of Mandelson. He will need to remember how easy it has been to trivialise democracy and to blow raspberries at the Press Complaints Commission. Blair’s predecessors as Labour leaders learned that lesson the hard way, from Day-One, without ever seriously experiencing the praise that has been lavished on Tony Blair.

Enough

The truth is that Tony Blair has so far succeeded in persuading the Conservative newspapers as well as their Middle-England readership that New Labour is no threat to them – indeed, on balance, is a better bet in their own interests than the alternative, a Hague-led deeply split Conservative Party. We must now ask – is that about to end? Our guess is: No, not yet.

However, if in all humility we might offer a few words of advice to the Prime Minister and his team it would be this: no Government, however able, in a land with a free press, with all its deformities, can ever count on the support of media moguls even when that Government is, by any objective measure, doing the right thing for the country. By definition the media moguls are part of the great power game and they have no intention of surrendering that role. Moreover, in a global sense they are probably more powerful now than at any time. They can and do shift Governments.

Nor can there ever be any guarantee that the private vested interests and deep cultural prejudices of the proprietors and their editors will not over-ride even the most intelligent, well-informed, journalistic awareness. And, of course, there can never be any guarantee that despite all the wooing, the private crony-talk, the secret dinner parties and the tacit nods and winks – that despite all these characteristic weaknesses which we all know exist at the top of the greasy pole of power, in politics and journalism – that despite it all some newspaper will simply lose patience and declare: “To hell with all this Tony Blair stuff – we have had enough of this guy”. It can happen even to the best, and luckiest, of New Labour Prime Ministers and, come to that, to any political leader. Though for Tony Blair, despite all the recent disasters, the verdict of the moguls will almost certainly be – “give him another turn at the wheel.”