Steeples and Spires, Part 2

Tony Blair: The Making of a World Leader
by Philip Stephens

(Page 4 of 5)

Though he could scarcely have known it at the time, Tony Blair took something else from this stifling world behind high walls. As he began to prosper in politics it was soon obvious that he was a remarkable actor. He stood out as a natural communicator, a young man with an instinctive ability to empathize with audiences, to strike just the right pose and cadence at just the right moment. Blair gave no hint at Fettes of the political career to come, for the ambition had yet to form. "No, you could not tell that he was going to be prime minister, nor even a politician. There was no sense of divine purpose about him," one of his oldest and closest friends told me. But equally, it was obvious from an early age that Blair was entranced by the footlights. "You have to remember that he's an actor, no, a performer, he's exuberant....He still gets nervous beforehand but he loves it," this friend added, commenting on Blair's prime ministerial performances.

One senior master at Fettes could claim some of the credit for Blair's later seemingly effortless command of the national mood. Eric Anderson was among the few authority figures at the school with whom the rebellious schoolboy established a rapport. Later he would say privately that the young Blair was "difficult." Anderson was often exasperated by his student's habit of questioning every rule - "Why" was his favorite word - yet he quite admired Blair's ability to charm himself out of awkward binds. Anderson, who went on to become headmaster of Eton, England's most famous public school, encouraged the future prime minister to channel some of this precocious energy into school drama. Early on, Blair was cast as Mark Anthony in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. When his pupil became leader of the Labour Party, Anderson recounted, "He did the 'Friends, Romans, countrymen' speech brilliantly, and I wonder if that gave him a taste for politics." A more challenging role followed as Captain Stanhope in Journey's End, a play by R. C. Sherriff that was popular at the time because of its depiction of the futility of war. Blair's portrayal of the army officer tormented by the bloody, hopeless battles between British and German soldiers across the trenches of World War I was widely acclaimed by his peers at Fettes and attracted a glowing review in the school magazine. Blair remembered this particular stage role well when more than three decades later he was leading Britain into war against Iraq. There were more parts in plays and reviews at Fettes and later at Oxford. David Kennedy, another of his teachers, was less kind than Anderson when he spoke to one of Blair's early biographers: "He [Blair] has always been conscious of how he appears to other people. The façade is always there. He is very intelligent and calculating. Don't forget that he was a superb actor."

The politician never lost his care with words, phrases, and presentation. Though as prime minister he could call on battalions of aides to draft his speeches, he preferred to craft them himself. In another nod to an earlier age, he composed them in longhand with a fountain pen rather than tap the keys of a personal computer. The meticulous care Blair takes with his personal appearance is another, albeit unconscious, legacy of his school days. Jeans and a polo shirt are fine when the prime minister is relaxing with his family, but once in the public eye, his suits, shirts, and ties are chosen with great care, his shoes always brightly polished. In the slightly barbed observation of one close adviser, "He's a politician who can never pass a mirror without looking into it." Vanity no doubt plays its part, and the performer still has a starring role in Blair's political persona. But the attention to detail also reflects that very English childhood.

Blair's theatrical gifts would be shown in their most brilliant light many years later in the aftermath of the death of Diana, the Princess of Wales. He had been prime minister for only a few months when the former wife of the Prince of Wales and heir to the throne died in a terrible car accident in Paris. Filmed against the backdrop of the local church in his Sedgefield constituency on that extraordinary Sunday morning in August 1997, Blair's televised response to the nation was a performance worthy of the most celebrated of thespians. "I feel like everyone else in this country today. I am utterly devastated," the prime minister began. Diana had been liked and loved by the whole nation. She was, Blair said in one brilliantly evocative phrase, "the People's Princess," and "that is how she will stay, how she will remain in our hearts and memories forever." The words were perfectly delivered, the voice breaking at precisely the right moment, the grief etched on the prime minister's face. Those who watched the appearance were sure they could see a tear in the corner of his eye. To the nation it seemed that this lament for "the People's Princess" was as real as her sudden death had been incredible. The initial reaction of the Queen and Prince Charles to the death of the estranged princess had been cold and distant, and it was left to the prime minister to speak for the nation at a time of tragedy. At Diana's funeral in Westminster Abbey, watched by hundreds of millions of people across the world, Blair delivered the famous passage from Corinthians - "When I was a child, I spoke like a child" - with the same emotional intensity. Within weeks his personal rating had soared off the opinion pollsters' scales. These were the most brilliantly accomplished of the many performances that marked out Blair's political ascent. They signaled a style of politics unfamiliar in Britain, but one that fitted his personality and his political ambition in equal measure. Eric Anderson could be proud of his handiwork.

Inevitably, such performances raised questions about Blair's political leadership. Where did the actor end and the real Tony Blair begin? For political opponents, the love of the stage was proof of a "phony" Tony. It's all an act, they would charge, and a deeply cynical one at that. Friends, too, sometimes wondered whether the prime minister was a touch too eager to apply the greasepaint. But by the time he reached 10 Downing Street the politician and the performer could no longer be separated. Those who knew Blair well insisted with convincing certainty that he had been genuinely upset by the death of Diana. He had met her privately on a number of occasions and, like many others, had been won over by her tragic charm. But yes, he also understood instinctively that her death offered an opportunity to cast himself as more than a mere politician, more even than a prime minister. When Alistair Campbell, his communications director, suggested the phrase "People's Princess," Blair instantly understood its unifying force. As prime minister, he practiced the politics of inclusion. The death of Diana offered a moment to bring the entire nation into the New Labour tent. If that required a few dramatic flourishes for the television cameras, so be it.

Soon after his election as Labour leader, Tony Blair was asked the question now put to every politician of the baby boom generation. Had he ever smoked dope? His reply blended wit with innocence. "No, but if I had, I would have inhaled." Here was a gentle tease at the expense of Bill Clinton, who had been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford a few years before Blair arrived at the university. (When pressed about his youthful acquaintance with cannabis, Clinton had said, rather lamely, that, yes, he had taken a puff or two while sitting around with fellow students, but he had never actually inhaled.) Blair's response seemed spontaneously clever; people laughed, and the question went away. In fact, this small, unimportant episode betrayed the strenuous efforts that Blair took to guard his image and reputation. As soon as he had become the leader of his party in 1994, his political aides had hit the telephones. They knew the media would be digging into his past. Anyone and everyone who had befriended Blair in his earlier life was contacted by his office. Were they aware of any skeletons in the closets of his past? Were they prepared to be discreet? Oh, and by the way, they should know that when the cannabis question was asked of the new Labour leader he would respond with a quip at Clinton's expense. In truth, although there were no great scandals to be uncovered, Blair's past would henceforth be choreographed as carefully as his political future.

When Blair arrived at St. John's at Oxford in 1972, the university was scarcely a hotbed of student revolution. The most it could muster in the way of activism was a few noisy demonstrations against the policies of the then Conservative government and a short occupation of the university's examination buildings in protest at the school's medieval statutes. But cannabis was cheap and ubiquitous. Most of Blair's crowd smoked it - by their own accounts, often in his presence. So had Tony really said no every time a joint was passed around during those long nights of rock music and earnest conversation about the dismal state of society? For someone of Blair's class and generation it would almost be stranger if he had not experimented. After all, the head of Britain's criminal prosecution service, who was an Oxford contemporary, has a conviction for cannabis possession. If youthful encounters with the drug were a bar to high office, the present generation of politicians would be eerily small. More interesting, perhaps, than whether Blair had actually experimented with cannabis was the concern that not even the smallest transgression should be allowed to sully his record.

© 2004 Viking, a division of Penguin Putnam, used by permission.

About the Author

Philip Stephens is a senior editor of the UK edition of the Financial Times and writes a column on political and economic affairs in Britain and Europe. He is the 2002 winner of the David Watt Prize for outstanding political journalism.