There has been no more abject moment in the Blair premiership than last Tuesday afternoon’s capitulation to the trade unions. The grandees of the movement, led by the new TUC general secretary Brendan Barber, were ushered with some deference into Downing Street. The ambitious Trade Secretary Patricia Hewitt, who has spent the past two years sucking up to the unions – or, as her allies prefer to put it, ‘undoing the damage’ caused by her predecessor Stephen Byers – viewed proceedings with pleasure. Finally, there was John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, looking smug.
Under discussion was a new settlement between the unions and government. For the past six years Tony Blair has viewed the brothers with a certain hauteur. He has treated them like any other special-interest group – for instance, the CBI or the Green lobby – but has granted no special favours. Last Tuesday that changed. The unions have been incorporated into the formal machinery of government. They will have representation on a standing body, chaired by a minister, on public-service reform. Downing Street privately indicated that this is just part of a series of moves that will bring the unions closer to the Blair government.
Last Tuesday was a triumph for Brendan Barber, for Dave Prentis of the public-service union Unison, for John Prescott and for Old Labour at large. It was a humiliation for Tony Blair, who built his political reputation as the man who could stand up to the unions. It made a nonsense of the pledge he made in 1997 to ‘govern as New Labour’, and is just the first of a series of bitter pills that he will have to swallow in the coming months. As Tony Blair knows better than anybody else, the presence of the unions at the heart of policy-making hands public services over to the producer interest.
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