Before England thumped Germany 5-1 last year, Gary Lineker used to say that football was a simple game played with 22 players and a ball, and after 90 minutes the Germans won. Until the 1997 election, British politics seemed rather like that too. Every four or five years we had an election and the Conservatives won.
The longer Labour spent out of power, the crueller seemed the winner-takes-all system and the more its interest in checks and balances grew. The same process can be seen today in the Conservative attitude to Lords reform. For 18 years in government they were uninterested in it. In 1997, they still defended the hereditary principle. But now there is great Tory enthusiasm for an elected, more powerful Lords. The reason? Opposition.
It was not just losing that made Labour want to change the rules. It was also Scotland. In the 1987 election the Tories were reduced to ten Scottish MPs-barely enough to staff the Scottish Office. The Scottish establishment had never liked Thatcherism. But that result in Scotland, combined with the imposition of the poll tax a year earlier than anywhere else in Britain, convinced many Scots that the system of government was also rotten.
From that moment, the long- held Labour and Liberal commitment on devolution turned into a crusade of the Scottish political class. The Constitutional Convention was formed, producing a plan for a Scottish parliament, tax varying powers, elections by proportional representation and no abolition of parliament without a referendum. This package became the foundation of Labour's reforms.
The party was committed to more constitutional change than any British government had previously achieved: a Scottish Parliament, a Welsh Assembly, a regional tier of government for England, a bill of rights, a mayor of London, freedom of information and an elected second chamber. Legislating for devolution alone had almost broken the Wilson-Callaghan government.
Hitherto, the left in Britain had always supported a strong central state able to provide uniform public services. But Labour now placed itself at the head of a movement demanding a fresh constitutional settlement, a new distribution of power. No government should ever again wield the central power that the Tories were wielding.
As soon as Tony Blair became leader in 1994, he set about re-examining the policy programme, ensuring there was nothing to trip up the party in a campaign. If he lost, he wanted it to be on the basis that there was nothing more he could have done, no internal challenge that he had ducked.
The constitutional reform agenda was not immune from this process and it also had to be designed in such a manner that it did not take up too much legislative time and derail the rest of the government's programme.
In order to ease the passage of the legislation, Labour announced-before the 1997 election-that there would be pre-legislative referenda on devolution. This decision was greeted with dismay by much of the Labour party and press in Scotland and Wales, but the reasoning was that it would, at a stroke, show popular support for the policy and muzzle the House of Lords. Also, by asking a separate question about the tax varying power for Scotland, it would counter the argument that there was something extra-constitutional about what the Tories had described as "a tax raising Scottish Parliament."
When the 1997 election was won, Labour was prepared and moved fast. On devolution, white papers were produced in a a few weeks-a process that had taken two years in the 1970s.
The decision to hold the referenda was vindicated-though the polls, held in September 1997, told two different stories. In Scotland, on a turnout of 60 per cent, 74 per cent of those voting supported the Scottish Parliament and 63.5 per cent the tax power. In Wales the picture was more ambivalent. The last time people had been asked in 1979 they were hostile. Years of Conservative government with low Tory support in Wales had helped to shift opinion but there was far less interest in the issue than in Scotland. By a majority of just 6,721, Wales voted "yes."
This success helped to ensure that, unlike in the 1970s, devolution legislation was passed with little fuss and only two years after Labour came to power, elections to the newly devolved institutions were held.
On the Lords, it was not so simple. Almost everyone agreed that the Lords was an anachronism. But reaching a consensus on what should replace it has eluded every government which has tried to reform it. The Conservatives, who benefited overwhelmingly from the pre-1997 House of Lords, had been adept at manipulating these disagreements to stop reform. To counter this strategy, Labour in opposition had agreed to take one step at a time. The first step was to remove the hereditary peers. The second, less defined stage was to create a "more democratic and representative" second chamber.
Again, to try to ensure reform could take place without derailing the rest of the programme, talks on the issue were begun between Labour and Conservative leaderships in the Lords. Just as the 1970s experience on devolution had informed Labour's approach on that issue, so the early 20th century and 1968 attempts at Lords reform were a warning of the delay and confusion that could engulf a government which threatened the second chamber.
Talks between Lord Richard and Lord Cranborne got nowhere. But the second more secret talks between Derry Irvine and Lord Cranborne-to the surprise of everyone, including government insiders-resulted in a deal to keep just under 100 hereditary peers as the price for peace on the rest of the legislative programme.
Other big changes also went through-the incorporation of the European Convention of Human Rights, a mayor for London, freedom of information and a new regime for regulating party funding. After Blair's first term, more political reform legislation had been passed than by any other modern government.
Defenders of the status quo had predicted gridlock, constitutional crisis, bickering between the devolved administrations and London. It has not happened. Relations between Westminster, Edinburgh and Cardiff have been good, although helped by having the same party in power in all three places. Differences that have emerged have been handled without any reference to formal dispute resolution mechanisms. Meanwhile, the overall political and economic strength of the United Kingdom has not been damaged, as many Conservatives predicted.
From liberal opinion and the left criticism of New Labour's changes was different. Here it centred on "control freakery," lack of coherence and a failure to place reform in a broader political narrative. On control freakery, New Labour was guilty but in relation to the party, not the new institutions. Where Blair got into trouble was over internal Labour selections-Alun Michael, Ken Livingstone-not an unwillingness to tolerate what the devolved bodies actually did. Thus at the same time that Michael was effectively imposed as Welsh leader, there was no move to stop the Scottish executive abolishing university tuition fees. Blair has admitted that his intervention over Michael was a mistake and has stayed away from subsequent selection battles.
Others questioned the lack of symmetry in Labour's plans. Why devolution to Scotland and Wales but not to English regions, or to England as a whole? What about the West Lothian question? What about further reform of the Lords? Why do we have proportional representation for some elections but not for others?
It is true that Labour's changes did not deliver a symmetrical system free of anomalies. But that was never the goal. The British system of government was never symmetrical. It has never had a post-war or post-revolutionary written constitution that codifies its basic laws. It is an asymmetrical state-multinational, yet with a dominant partner which contains over 80 per cent of the population. And Tony Blair and Donald Dewar did face up to one of the consequences of Scottish devolution by reviewing the historic over-representation of Scottish MPs at Westminster-a process which will lead to a reduction in the number of Scottish MPs at the next election.
Some constitutional reformers criticised Labour for implementing some changes but not others. But blueprints are not compatible with the competing interests and pressures of real politics. Moreover, Labour faced the difficult task of decentralising power, while trying to respond to public pressure to sort out big domestic and international issues, pressure which demands a strong centre. Many of the advances of the 20th century of which Labour is most proud-the NHS and welfare state-were driven by strong central governments. The same pressures for action from the centre are driving the reform of public services today.
The related criticism-that Tony Blair did not profess his love for the changes-sits oddly with the demand for more substance and less spin from politicians. New Labour delivered on the substance of its promises for political reform. Why were those changes any less real because the prime minister did not make many speeches about them? The government decided that its main message should be on issues like health, education and stable economic management-issues it knew were closer to the hearts of the voters than constitutional reform.
On the legislative front, the second term will inevitably be more limited in scope than the first. A white paper on regional government is to be published soon. Demand for this kind of change is patchy in England, but Labour could possibly win a referendum on regional government in the northeast. For that to happen the government will have to be clear about what such a body would do and why it is needed.
Lords reform has gone quiet. The government's plan looks to be suffering the fate of many of its predecessors -the capacity of both reformers and their opponents to block plans for a new chamber. Even members of the government have said that they think the plan is useless, so it is little wonder that it has failed to get off the ground.
But it would be a mistake to view the future of constitutional change only in terms of new legislation. Crucial to the future of New Labour's reforms will be the bedding down of the changes passed in its first term. The Scottish and Welsh elections in May next year will present a crucial test for the devolved institutions and the coalitions which lead them. The task for the parties contesting the elections will be to move beyond constitutional issues to show how the devolved institutions can change their countries for the better.
This is a challenge to the cabinets, parties and in particular to the First Ministers in Scotland and Wales. For the Lib/Lab coalitions which now run the devolved administrations it is also an opportunity. The Conservative parties in Scotland and Wales have not recovered from their wipeout in 1997. In a different way, the nationalists too are ill-prepared. Although more popular than the Tories, they seem locked in an oppositional pressure group mentality, incapable either of escaping from a defence of producer interests or of resolving their debates about independence. If the Lib-Lab coalitions define the direction of their leadership and set out where they want Scotland and Wales to be in five years' time, they can consolidate their positions and take devolution to its next phase.
Labour fulfilled its promise to change the rules. There have been mistakes and failures but it gave a new voice to people in Scotland, Wales and London. It has begun change in the Lords and entrenched human rights legislation. And the fact that it has achieved these things without creating legislative chaos will go down as one of its lasting achievements.
