Rob Blackhurst

AK13

22 January 2004

British writers can't bear Blair, writes Rob Blackhurst.

---

British writers can't bear Blair, writes Rob Blackhurst.

Rob Blackhurst

22/01/2004

Tony Blair might be forgiven for feeling the rule of politicians never working with children or animals should be extended to the literary world. News that novelist JG Ballard and playwright Michael Frayn last year refused honours dangled under their noses marks an all-time low in relations between a British Prime Minister and the literati.

Harold Pinter has suggested that Blair should "wash down the cucumber sandwiches" eaten during Bush's recent State visit "with a glass of blood". Others, scribbling in more modulated tones, like Zadie Smith, Julian Barnes and Andrew Motion, blame him for leading Britain into Bush's war. Playwright David Hare is furious with the Prime Minister for failing to re-nationalise the railways; uber-Blairite Ken Follett has excoriated the culture of spin around the Prime Minister and even Robert Harris uses language like "cynicism", "duplicity" and "toe-curling" to describe his former intimates.

Many on the right, regardless of policy, cannot stand that ingratiating smile. Freddie Forsyth fulminates about "this popinjay that I like less and less every time he opens his mouth", and John Le Carre cringes as the Prime Minister "lends his head prefect's sophistries to [Bush's] colonialist adventure".

Writers of fiction want human drama - soaring rhetoric, grand gestures and polarised political debate - and are impatient with the thin gruel of public policy. Thatcher's appeal for Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis lay in her glamour and her adoption of simplistic slogans. "What a superb creature she is", Larkin wrote, "right and beautiful - few Prime Ministers are either". Amis thought her impossibly beautiful next to "that tousled-haired totalitarian Shirley Williams". Neither was very interested in the theory of monetarism.

In contrast, the left-wing literati always hated both the leader cult surrounding Blair and, more fundamentally for writers dealing in socialist utopias, his ideological weaving – the last thing to stir a creative soul. Combined with New Labour's brew of tabloid values and management speak, it is unsurprising few professional wordsmiths are prepared to support this Government.

There is a cussed streak in the British literary left that will never be happy propping up power. The bloody-mindedness of the literary left has a long tradition: George Orwell could only bring himself to back the tiny Independent Labour Party rather than its bigger sibling that could actually win power at the general election.

In America, things could not be more different. During the Lewinsky scandal, the top-drawer of US writers rallied around Clinton. Toni Morrison famously lauded him as the "first African American President"; Phillip Roth called for a banner to be put up outside the White House saying "a human being lives here". And most amazingly, John Updike claimed that he "would be very surprised if Clinton's conduct were anything but exemplary . . . I don't he's doing anything other than working hard at being a good president. And I just think we have to forgive him whatever". Is it conceivable that Tony Blair in similar dire straits would hear anything but a snarl?