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How to draw political power from an attempt at impeachment

By Mark Lawson
THE GUARDIAN, London
Friday, Sep 03, 2004, Page 9

Athough readers are generally correct when they spot errors in the press, there's one topic in US politics which brings a torrent of false corrections. Write that Richard Nixon avoided impeachment while Bill Clinton suffered it and correspondents will protest the reverse. This occurs because of confusion between impeachment and resignation. Dick and Bill each got away with one but not the other.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair may be about to add a little British footnote to this area of American constitutional studies by becoming a British leader who sidestepped both impeachment and resignation during a legislative attempt to unseat him.

A Plaid Cymru (Welsh nationalist) Member of Parliament, Adam Price, is attempting to use an almost defunct statute to bring impeachment proceedings against Blair on charges of misleading the British public about the case for war in Iraq and, in effect, of conspiring with US President George W. Bush behind the backs of parliamentarians.

US Senator Hillary Clinton famously claimed that the trial of her husband in 1999 was the culmination of a "vast right-wing conspiracy." If Cherie Blair wants to make a similar defense, then, on current evidence, she can point to a "small regional conspiracy."

Other comparisons between the two processes are equally to Blair's advantage. The evidence against Clinton was gathered by Ken Starr, who seemed to regard himself as prosecuting counsel. In Blair's case, the paper trail was shaped by Lords Hutton and Butler who, if they ever formed a rock band, would call it Status Quo. In the US, the impeachment process had seen off Nixon only 25 years before; in Britain it was last used against Lord Palmerston in 1848.

Purely Personal

One difference disadvantageous to Blair is that Clinton was helped by the fact that he was being investigated for an affair on state property rather than affairs of state. Blair can't complain that the question of whether he sucked up to Bush in the Oval Office is purely personal.

Like Nixon, he would be tested on the question of what he knew and when he knew it on questions of true constitutional importance, although Blair would be helped by Britain's lack of a Constitution.

In 1974, there was documentary evidence of wrongdoing against Nixon, including witness testimony and tape recordings. But the case against Blair consists largely of his claims about Iraqi capabilities being proved wrong by subsequent events. Short of the discovery of secret tapes at No. 10 Downing Street, any trial of Blair would be a foreign policy equivalent of a sexual harassment case: turning on interpretations of words and events.

And, realistically, even a trial on impeachment charges seems unlikely. Clinton's enemies had a strong process but weak charges; those hostile to Blair have compelling allegations but dusty and probably useless instruments. Labour's huge Commons majority would almost certainly vote down any trial.

Level of Anger

Yet the impeachment attempt is interesting because of what it reveals about the level of anger against Blair: it's likely that many Labour members of parliament would support the move if they had the courage or it had the plausibility. At the time of the Nixon and Clinton impeachment attempts, it was a commonplace of political commentary that it was easier for the British to get rid of their leaders than it was for the Americans. This assumption was based on the vulnerability of leaders in a parliamentary system to party maneuverings and slipping majorities.

Blair's survival despite huge legislative and public disquiet shows that this comparison collapses after a landslide. The nearly forgotten British Conservative politician Francis Pym was once rebuked by his leader, Margaret Thatcher, for warning that large majorities were dangerous. Although the Conservatives largely created Blair's vast lead in seats by the visible exhaustion and tawdriness of their last administration, the Pym doctrine is certain to be one of the lessons which history takes from the current government.

Labour's 1997 parliamentary avalanche turned Tony Blair into a freelance prime minister and has allowed him to remain immune from rebuke through the biggest political controversy in generations. It is this apparent indomitability that has

provoked the imaginative, but

surely doomed, attempt at impeachment. Blair's enemies hope to rattle him: drop a little more bird-dirt on the already splattered statue of his reputation. The big risk is that they will further burnish his inner mythology of dignified survival against all comers.

With the public likely to vote on Blair in less than a year, parliamentary intervention feels presumptuous. The Republicans who pursued Clinton without having the necessary votes -- and that in a system which had a recent precedent for the process -- had the effect of consolidating the enemy's position.
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