Constitutional reform will be seen as the Blair governments’ greatest legacy. But it is a subject in which Tony Blair is famously uninterested, and to which he has devoted only one speech as Labour leader. Significantly, that was the first John Smith memorial lecture, and the subject was chosen in homage to his predecessor, whose cause (and legacy) it was.
In Blair’s mind, constitutional reform was the agenda of his first term, when the government legislated for devolution, the Human Rights Act and Lords reform. Having legislated, Blair was able to put the issue behind him and move on to the “real” issues of education, health, crime and so on. But constitutional reform keeps coming back. It continued into the second term, and it continues strongly still. For the tidal wave of reforms in the first term released second and third waves that are still working their way through the system.
The Labour party has long believed in the need for strong and effective central government to deliver greater equality and social justice. Nye Bevan was opposed to devolution for precisely that reason, as was Neil Kinnock. Devolution and decentralisation inevitably mean greater diversity and a risk of greater inequity and inefficiency. The tension between these competing values is as old as the Jacobins and the Girondins. At heart Blair is a Jacobin, a strong, messianic leader whose instinctive response to any political problem is to tighten his grip on the levers of power.
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