LONDON -- Watching British Prime Minister Tony Blair is like watching a religious phenomenon. He has stepped off his platform on the backs of members of the Labor Party and has ascended into the clouds, where he hopes to be borne along by the rushing winds of the future. As he lifts off, he kicks away the old ladder of class and party loyalties. He has gambled his party's future on being able to realize his vision of 21st-century Britain. What no one knows is whether he cares if -- or indeed whether it matters if -- the party does not survive the ascension of its leader.
This transmogrification of Blair into prophetic, and unchallenged, leader took place while he delivered his leader's address to the Labor Party's annual conference in Bournemouth on Tuesday. Since he became leader of the party, this annual speech has never failed to stir the members; either their hearts are touched and softened by Blair's confident, hopeful image of the better life that Labor promises, or their minds crackle stiffly as yet another layer of cynicism hardens.
Despite the trappings of futurist technology -- the backdrops, the moving lights, the video, the transparent thingummy that carries his speech, the supereffective microphones, the instant television relay -- Blair is actually the most old-fashioned leader Britain has had since the Liberals' David Lloyd George 90 years ago. (Winston Churchill, Britain's best-known political speechifier, was a man of the written word, delivered on radio, in thousands of articles and many huge books. He was not a rousing platform speaker.) Blair does something no postwar party leader has done -- use a platform speech to reach out emotionally to his listeners, to mix religious and moral sentiments with political action.