Tony Blair is four months away from celebrating a decade as leader of the Labour party. Ten years is a respectable stint. Keir Hardie managed two; George Lansbury and Michael Foot just three; Huge Gaitskell died in his eighth year as leader. But Blair has some way to go to beat Neil Kinnock's 11 years, Harold Wilson's 13, or Clement Attlee's unbeaten 20 years as Labour party leader.
It has been a pivotal decade in British politics. Blair has been both master and slave to events. In the mid-90s, Blair seemed to bestride the political world like a Colossus. Following the death of John Smith, Blair led a Labour party brimming with confidence and new ideas. With John Major's authority draining like blood from a severed artery, he was seen as the young, exciting, new hope for Britain. It is hard to believe that people celebrated in the streets after the 1997 election result, that strangers smiled at each other on that morning of May 2, that politics seemed relevant and vibrant. Then, you couldn't find anyone willing to admit to not voting Labour. Today, after the travails of Iraq, the Hutton inquiry, the backbench revolts and cabinet resignations, it is hard to find someone who will admit that they do.
There are many books about Tony Blair. The early biographies, rushed into the shops after 1994, have been joined by longer, serious works. There are books about Blair's history, his psychology, his policies and his wife. There is no shortage of interpretation and commentary. One day there will be an autobiography, I'm sure. But there were no books containing Blair's own thoughts and words, expressed through speeches and articles, so I decided to put one together.
Now that Tony Blair in his own words is about to be published, I can look back and see how Blair's style has changed. I decided early on that I would not include any of the obviously ghosted newspaper articles, churned out by the Downing Street scribes, nor the official prime ministerial statements, crafted by civil servants. What are far more illuminating are those speeches and articles where Blair has had a personal hand, or perhaps even the only hand. Here we see Blair's real values, visions and ideas.
I started with an extraordinary lecture, delivered by Blair in 1982 in Western Australia, at Murdoch University. Blair's political mentor is an Australian priest called Peter Thomson, who he met at Oxford. Along with his pal Geoff Gallop, Thomson invited Blair to Australia following Blair's defeat in the 1982 Beaconsfield byelection. Perhaps the lecture was an excuse for a break in the sunshine with Cherie.
This lecture has never seen the light of day in Britain - I had to call in favours across Australia to unearth a copy. It is a forensic analysis of Labour's position in the late 70s and early 80s. Already, the seeds of New Labour are being sown. Blair rejects Bennism and the ultra-leftism of Militant and Labour Briefing, and highlights the absurdity of Labour's policy on council house sales. He calls for local Labour parties to grow from the local community. And he ends with the advice to the Labour party that "its goals of social equality and justice cannot be realised in the abstract, but must be realised in a relative and often shifting world." There may be some New Labour ideas, but the language is pure traditional Labour. This lecture is the last time in his career that Tony Blair quotes Lenin.
In his 1983 maiden speech to the House of Commons, Blair is still in the old Labour comfort zone. He tells the house: "I am a socialist not through reading a textbook that has caught my intellectual fancy, nor through unthinking tradition, but because I believe that, at its best, socialism corresponds most closely to an existence that is both rational and moral. It stands for co-operation, not confrontation, for fellowship, not fear"'
In the mid- to late-80s Blair made his name as a competent shadow minister, helping Neil Kinnock's refashioning of Labour's policies. In this period, his speeches are workmanlike, technical, professional, but largely uninspiring.
After the collapse of communism Blair's ideas start to develop, and break free from traditional Labour thinking. He used an article in Marxism Today in 1991 to expound a new left politics based on community and fellowship, rather than nationalisation and taxation. He wrote: "citizenship without community, and without the willingness to act as a society, is empty rhetoric." It was as shadow home secretary that Blair found his rhetorical style and confirmed his political ideas.
Between 1992 and 1994, Blair created New Labour. He used the term first in May 1992, following Labour's defeat. In an article for Renewal magazine in 1993 "why modernisation matters" he established the New Labour ethos, not knowing how soon he would become leader.
And then, all hell breaks loose. After 1994, Blair makes speeches, and writes articles which challenge Labour's assumptions, shake up the constituency parties, and inject real excitement into politics. This is when the lexicon of New Labour is forged: "New Britain", "Fairness not favours", "Education, education, education", "the young country", "the stakeholder society"...
My book covers the party conference speeches, the statement on the death of Diana when he christened her "the People's princess" and the birth of the "third way".
Then, in September 2001, Blair's style changes utterly. The terrorist attacks of 9-11, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, mean that Blair's themes and language have to match his new position as a world leader in time of war. He chooses sweeping themes of democracy and freedom in his address to the US Congress and the Iraq debate in the House of Commons. There are echoes of Churchill and Palmerston. There is real political drama.
I am often asked whether a study of Blair's changing style reveals any embarrassing inconsistencies. Unlike most of his colleagues - the student Marxists and Bennite firebrands turned cabinet ministers - Blair has remained remarkably consistent in his political values and views. Having arrived at politics late, after university, he has stuck to his beliefs, which might be described as Christian Socialism meets global realpolitik. But as the book shows, the changes in style and tone have matched the changes in Britain's political history, and reflect our own turbulent times.
· Tony Blair in his own words, edited by Paul Richards, is published by Politico's this week
