But Britons are also watching to see how the Blairs resolve their family-leave debate. In March, Cherie pointedly praised Finland’s prime minister, who in 1998 took a week off to be with his baby daughter. Then, just days before she went into labor, she put on her barrister’s wig and, representing the Trades Union Congress, sued her husband’s government for excluding 2.7 million workers from 13 weeks of parental leave that was lawfully theirs. “What they are losing,” she told the court, “is the right to family life.”
Her husband didn’t buy it. At a dinner for the Confederation of British Industry that same evening, the prime minister delivered a New Labour lullaby to business. What the country needs, he said, is “a labor market that is actively promoting work.” Rarely has the life-work drama drawn such high- profile actors. Anxious to create a dynamic economy, Blair is trying to build family-friendly workplaces. At the same time, he’s faced with the task of transforming Britain into a muscled player in the New Economy. “They talk about the Third Way, which is another way of saying they want to be all things to all people,” says Ruth Lea, policy director at the Institute of Directors, a London-based business association. “Well, you can’t be.”
In the end, Papa Blair decided not even to try. Though he has cut down on his work schedule, he has decided not to take any official parental leave–a brave decision, considering that a Gallup poll earlier this month found 57 percent of Britons thought he should. After all, there was no parental-leave policy in Britain until Blair’s government implemented one five months ago. It allows every parent of a child born or adopted after Dec. 15, 1999, 13 weeks of unpaid leave in the first five years of the child’s life.
But the plan is still the weakest in Europe. The government estimates that only 2 percent of men and 35 percent of women will take their allotted leave. In the new go-go Britain, there is ever more pressure to return to work quickly. Even Blair’s own backbenchers have their gripes; when the prime minister came to office in 1997, he brought 119 female M.P.s and plans to make the House of Commons more welcoming to women. Earlier this month Tess Kingham, Labour M.P. and mother of three, resigned, in part because of the boys’ club atmosphere and long hours. And Speaker of the House Betty Boothroyd ruled that women M.P.s couldn’t breast-feed in working areas of Parliament. Apparently no one told her that Blair’s Health minister had just launched National Breast-Feeding Awareness week.
