EDITORIAL - Holness can learn from Tony Blair

Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, is not a transcendental political figure, with a secure place in history, who emerging leaders would hold as a role model - like Abraham Lincoln is to Barack Obama.

Mr Blair is yet to recover from leading Britain into the Iraq War on concocted intelligence and a perception among his critics that he morphed into George Bush's poodle. Of course, it wasn't always that way.

But whatever opinion of Tony Blair that may now be fashionable, we believe that he is a figure worthy of emulation by Andrew Holness, the leader of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). Or, more relevant to Mr Holness is the period between Tony Blair's ascension to the leadership of the British Labour Party in 1994 and becoming prime minister in 1997.

There are significant similarities in the political fortunes of the institutions both men inherited, although, despite the parties' names, the ideological outlook of both has been vastly different.

The British Labour Party was Fabian socialist, but accommodated views much farther left on the political spectrum and rested on a constitution that committed its support for state control of the commanding heights of the economy. While its original foundation was a trade union, it is hard, up to now, to discern an overarching philosophy that binds the JLP, except a nominal adherence to the market and an alignment to the West.

same challenges

In 1994, at the time of the sudden death of the British Labour Party's then leader, John Smith, it was bedevilled with many of the same challenges that have faced the JLP for more than two decades and now confront Mr Holness. Labour had been in Opposition since 1979, when the Tories, under Margaret Thatcher, had won the election.

There are in these observations echoes of the JLP's current situation. Mr Holness' party was in Opposition for more than 18 years until 2007 when it returned to office, but only for four years until last December when voters sent it packing. Since 1967, it has failed to win back-to-back elections, except for the uncontested poll of 1983.

In Britain, Mr Blair diagnosed Labour's problem as its failure to modernise. As he put it in his memoirs, A Journey: My Political Life, the party had "lost touch (and) failed to spot how the society has changed".

When he vied for leadership on John Smith's death, Tony Blair was certain he was the man to overhaul the Labour Party, making it relevant to modern Britain, more so than his friend and potential rival, Gordon Brown: "I was the moderniser, in personality, in language, in time, in feel and temperament."

It is clear that the JLP, like the old British Labour Party, has long been out of sync with the Jamaican electorate, many of the reasons for which are obvious and require conviction to confront and defeat. But there is also the party to understand.

Mr Holness, if he is convinced that he is the man to turn around the JLP, can learn much from Mr Blair's book, including the fact once he was certain, Mr Blair's ambition was not constrained by old friendships or sentiment. That, we believe, would be a small price to pay for the revival of the JLP and in the interest of Jamaica's democracy.

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