The Guardian view on the Blair-era archives: fateful decisions come in many guises | Editorial

Judgments about Tony Blair’s Labour government tend inevitably to focus on the Iraq war. Iraq was traumatic and defining. Britain’s role, driven by Mr Blair, exposed his overly personal system of decision-making. The invasion was a historic and bloody failure, killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and sowing dragon’s teeth. At home, the war devastated Mr Blair’s reputation and drained support from Labour.

The publication this week by the National Archives of Blair government papers under the 20-year rule does nothing to undermine Iraq’s importance in the history of that period. We read, for instance, of the US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage complaining that President George Bush thought he was “on some sort of mission from God” in Iraq, and that Mr Blair needed to give the president “a dose of reality”. But by then, tragically, the damage was long done.

Nevertheless, the latest documents also provide an unusually vivid account of a quite separate policy failure. The argument behind this one was never a secret, and the policy decision took place far less emotively. But this was a profound dispute, which split the cabinet deeply. Twenty years on, the outcome remains a fateful one.

The argument in 2004 was about migration. In May of that year, the European Union was preparing to enlarge, admitting 74 million new citizens from 10 new member states, eight of them from the former communist bloc in eastern Europe. Britain was a staunch advocate of EU enlargement, for reasons both of post-cold-war principle and diplomatic pragmatism. But ministers were divided about the speed with which the citizens of accession states should have freedom of movement to work in Britain. So were the other EU member states. Although most were enthusiastic about embracing the east, countries like Germany, Austria, Belgium and France were also nervous about the economic impact of an influx of lower-paid eastern European workers. By the spring of 2004, 10 of the existing 15 EU states had decided to delay the introduction of full freedom-of-movement rights, by up to a maximum of seven years.

The Blair government was initially undecided. Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, urged delay. David Blunkett, the home secretary, backed by Gordon Brown at the Treasury, pressed for an immediate introduction. Mr Blair was conflicted, favouring decisive labour market openness but anxious about the potential impact on benefit claims.

In the end, though, Britain opened its doors. It did so, in part, because the Home Office forecast a relatively small impact of 13,000 EU migrants in the first year. In the event, 87,000 arrived by the end of 2004, with 750,000 migrating by the end of 2007. Not for the last time, government statisticians got important figures wrong.

Migration was already a major political issue before 2004. After 2004, however, it became an increasingly dominant one. For all the benefits of EU migration, the unanticipated scale and speed of arrivals pushed politicians in all parties to make unrealistic pledges, helped to move public opinion towards the vote to leave the EU in 2016, and fed the rise of populist parties such as Ukip and Reform UK. The decision is a case study in how good ministerial intentions, along with apparently trustworthy research, can take a government in a political direction that it can no longer control. The implications of that failure are as topical today as they were 20 years ago.

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