Ten years on

TEN years ago when Tony Blair was the bright young politician who was runaway favourite to be elected as new Labour leader, our then political correspondent, Jack Foster, asked a question: just what does Tony Blair stand for?

Jack was unable to find an answer. And astonishingly, despite all that has happened since, many people today are still not quite sure.

Teflon Tony, the man who has enjoyed more worst weeks in politics than any other politician and yet still manages a convincing lead in the opinion polls, often presents himself as a man of real, almost messianic conviction. Yet just what those convictions are is hard to say.

It is easy enough to list his achievements. Mr Blair is the man who made his party electable again - with a little help from his predecessors Neil Kinnock and John Smith - and who has led it to two terms in power.

He is also the Labour Prime Minister who distanced his party from the Trades Unions; who wooed big business; who stuck - in the early years of his premiership, at least - to Tory spending plans; and who, through the introduction of PFI (the Private Finance Initiative), has introduced the private sector into the health system and education.

He is the Labour Prime Minister who has formed a close - many would say too close - friendship with Republican US President George Bush, and who led this country to war with Iraq, against the wishes of many in his own party and the country at large.

But who is the real Tony Blair? What does he believe in - and what will his legacy be for the party he leads and the country as a whole?

What he is not, sniffs former Labour Party member Laurence Burt, is a genuine Labour politician at all.

"He's a clever man, but he has no wisdom," says the 79-year-old retired lecturer in fine art who lives in central York. "He does not belong in the Labour Party at all. I always say he should have gone into the church. He would have convinced a lot of people. He is so convincing - except to real people, perceptive people."

Strong stuff. Mr Burt is typical of life-long Labour voters who feel the party has lurched so far to the right it no longer represents what they believe in.

Born into a "respectable, working class background among ordinary, decent people", Mr Burt believes in the traditional values and ideals of the original Labour Party. Service is a word he likes to use.

"Its meaning implied the concept that one served one's fellow beings regardless of reward or a sole concern for profit margins," he says. "It was a byword which helped build a cohesive society in Britain where people were socially conscious of their neighbour, naturally kind to one another, and where there appeared to be collective purpose aimed at the good and betterment of all."

There's another word for that, he says: socialism.

Like many, having voted Labour all his life he joined the Party in the mid-1990s, desperate to help end years of Tory rule. He was thrilled at the 1997 victory. "When Blair got elected, we all cheered," he says.

Disillusionment quickly set in. Student top-up fees were perhaps the final nail in the coffin - in his day, he says, getting into debt was unthinkable for most working class people, and the idea that you should have to get into debt just to get an education horrified many traditional Labour voters.

By 2000, he had left the party. Now he dismisses it as the Blair Party - and all that is left, he says, is a coterie of second-rate, sycophantic ministers who "supportively surround and do the word-for-word bidding of a clever and somewhat glib, self-deluded person who virtually destroyed the historical Labour party".

Clearly not a Mr Blair fan, then. In fact, if there were an election tomorrow, he says, he would vote Liberal Democrat.

Frank Ormston certainly wouldn't do that. But he wouldn't vote Labour, either. As a member of the left-of-Labour Socialist Alliance (which has now been absorbed into Respect), not even old Labour was socialist enough for him.

But Mr Blair has dragged the party far away from its old Labour roots, says the 45-year-old Network Rail employee, who lives in York.

Like many people, Mr Ormston admits he doesn't know what to make of Mr Blair the man.

"I think all you can do is judge him on his record," he says. "That record includes keeping up Tory privatisation plans, PFI in schools and hospitals, and war on Iraq. It is increasingly difficult to see any difference between him and the Tories."

Mr Blair, he says, seems to have modelled his presidential, control-freak style on Mrs Thatcher - she was the first person he invited to visit him at No 10, he points out. The most blatant example of that style was the way he bludgeoned his party into accepting war with Iraq. His other obsession is spin - though Mr Ormston admits that has been around in politics for a while.

"The spinning of news is a deliberate attempt to avoid things that may be seen as difficult," he says. "But the war against Iraq and against terror was spun to a ridiculous degree."

Like Frank Ormston, Helen Sourbut describes herself as a socialist. "It has always seemed to me that the stronger should help the weaker and the richer should help the poorer," she says. Unlike Frank, however, she sees no conflict between holding those beliefs and being a member of the Labour Party.

The retired 66-year-old, who lives in York, has always voted Labour and has been a card-carrying party member for 12 years. She is chairman of the Micklegate branch of the York Labour Party.

As you'd expect, she springs to the party's defence. Stung by the description of new Labour as 'Tory lite', she says the party has done much to help poor families.

"No Tory would ever have given the family tax credit, the winter fuel allowance, the pensions credit. A lot of what the party has done has been very good, and I think they don't always advertise the fact enough."

She concedes, however, that Mr Blair has 'lightened up' the party's traditional values in order to appeal to more people. And even this card-carrying Labour party member admits there are some things Mr Blair has done that she 'totally disagrees' with. Such as taking the country to war with Iraq, for example; and his close friendship with George W Bush (she would rather see us closer to Europe).

So her verdict on Mr Blair? He's done a lot of good for the country, and some harm but he's probably still an electoral asset for the Labour Party.

And what of the man himself - what does she think he believes in?

There is a pause. Then: "How can anyone know that about anybody?" she says.

Especially about Tony Blair, it seems.

Tony's time-line: Fresh-faced party leader to battle-hardened prime minister

1994

July 21: Tony Blair elected Labour Party leader

1995

Apr 29: Special Labour conference approves new Clause IV

1997

May 1: Labour General Election landslide. Blair becomes Prime Minister

Nov 16: Blair apologises over £1 million donation to Labour from Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone

1998

Jan 18: Source close to Blair describes Gordon Brown as "psychologically flawed"

Apr 10: Good Friday Agreement signed at Stormont

Aug 15: Omagh bomb leaves 29 dead

Dec 16: US and British forces launch air and missile attacks on Iraq

1999

Mar 24: Nato launches airstrikes against targets in Yugoslavia over attacks on Kosovo Albanians

Oct 26: Deal between Government and Opposition ends right of most hereditary peers to sit in the Lords

2000

Jan 1: Millennium Dome opening fiasco

May 4: Ken Livingstone defeats Frank Dobson to become Mayor of London

May 20: Cherie Blair gives birth to baby Leo

Sept 8: Fuel protesters begin blockade of petrol refineries

2001

Feb 20: Britain's first case of foot and mouth for 20 years

June 7: Labour re-elected in a second landslide

Sept 11: Blair vows to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with the US after the terror attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon

Oct 7: US and Britain launch missile strikes against Taliban in Afghanistan

2002

Sept 7: Blair offers Bush support over Iraq but urges him to seek UN backing for military action

Sept 24: Blair publishes dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction

Dec 10: Cherie Blair apologises for embarrassing Government over Australian conman Peter Foster

2003

Jan 11: Royal Navy task force leaves for the Gulf

Apr 9: Saddam Hussein's statue toppled by US troops

Jul 17: Blair tells joint session of US Congress "history will forgive" the Iraq war.

Jul 18: The body of government scientist Dr David Kelly found in woodland beauty spot.

Oct 19: Blair admitted to hospital with irregular heartbeat

Dec 13: Saddam Hussein captured

2004

Jan 27: Government wins Commons vote on university top-up fees by five votes

Jan 28: Hutton Report clears Downing Street of "sexing up" the Iraq dossier

Jun 28: Britain and US hand over sovereignty to interim Iraqi government

Jul 15: Liberal Democrats take Leicester South from Labour in by-election

Updated: 09:16 Wednesday, July 21, 2004