How the Party of the Working Class Lost Its Soul

When a young Tony Blair moved into Downing Street back in 1997, the British prime minister seemed destined for a life of modest affluence. His wife was a successful lawyer; he owned a large period house in a fashionable patch of London; and he could look forward to free state lodgings and a prime minister's salary. By the standards of his fellow citizens, the leader of the Labour Party was a well-off man.

But that was just the start of Blair's fortune. By some reckonings, Blair has amassed $30 million since standing down from office three years ago. His family's property portfolio alone is worth at least $20 million. As a consultant, he commands hefty fees advising global players in the financial-services sector. As a lecturer, he can reportedly charge an eye-popping $250,000 for an appearance.

Is Blair merely reaping his just rewards—or do his riches make him an ideological sellout? To critics, Blair's moneymaking is symptomatic of Labour's damaging drift away from its ancient values and a loosening of the historic bond with its core working-class supporters. In the words of Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee, Blair and some senior colleagues are guilty of betrayal: "power and money sent their compasses spinning" and seduced them "into the very un-Labour worlds of lucre."

Certainly, the apparent weakness for Big Money and the high life exhibited by Blair presents a soft target to a hostile press, particularly at a time when Labour is keen to rebuild support after its thrashing in this year's elections. The tabloids love to dwell on the apparent inconsistency of a Labour leader who holidays in Barbados or owns an $8 million mansion in the country. When Blair announced last month that he would give all the revenues from his newly published memoirs—estimated at more than $6 million—to a services charity, cynical commentators were quick to remark that it was an easy gesture for a multimillionaire to make.

And Blair is far from alone in facing such let-them-eat-cake charges. Peter Mandelson, once Blair's closest adviser, took a battering from the media after it was revealed that he vacationed on a yacht in the Mediterranean as a guest of a Rothschild. In his recently published diaries, Blair's former spin doctor, Alastair Campbell, identifies what he calls Mandelson's "lifestyle ambitions" as his principal weakness, pointing to "his desire to be famous and mingle with the rich and the great and the good."

In fact, over the 13 years of Labour government, an undue interest in wealth and the wealthy became a constant theme of press criticism. As home secretary, David Blunkett was pilloried for his visits to an upper-crust Mayfair nightclub and his affair with the wealthy publisher of the right-wing Spectator magazine. Earlier this year a television sting revealed three former Labour cabinet ministers eagerly pursuing a bogus offer of lucrative lobbying work. Even the austere Gordon Brown, who succeeded Blair at Downing Street, is accused of an admiring respect for City bankers, a weakness allegedly reflected in Labour's disastrously light-handed approach to regulating the financial-services sector. (According to some press accounts last week, Brown has now signed up with the same lecture agency as Tony Blair.)

The trouble for Labour is that it's too easy to make the link between the prevailing philosophy of the Blair-Brown years and the leadership's enthusiasm for the money culture. After all, the attempt to modernize the party as "New Labour" involved rejecting suspicions of the rich and the business of wealth creation. In the words of Peter Mandelson, Labour "was intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich."

At a time of national austerity, such attitudes look at best insensitive. Small wonder that the candidates in this month's contest for the Labour Party leadership have been eager to distance themselves from the previous generation, noting that support has slipped fastest among the party's old working-class constituency. Says leading contender David Miliband: "In the last election Labour lost support across all of society because people thought we were no longer on their side." The people don't need their leaders to be poor, but turns out they're skeptical of the filthy rich.