Bliar, Bliar, World's on Fire |
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In a recent article in Tribune, writer Kevin Maguire runs a parody of the famous `what have the Romans ever done for us' scene in Life of Brian. It ends like this: Disillusioned activist: All right but apart from the record health spending, the jobs, redistributive tax credits, higher pensions, public order, new schools, employment rights, minimum wage and more coppers what have the Labour government ever done for us? (Labour) Loyalist: Brought Peace At this point Maguire argues the disastrous invasion of Iraq means the parody breaks down. We shall return to Blair's support for US imperialism, but in reality, Kevin's parody is well off the mark, suggesting as it does that New Labour's `achievements' should be considered as somehow progressive. And before we explore that further we should pay tribute to The Citizen and The Next Left, which merged with the Citizen in the mid nineties. Both journals always argued that the New Labour project, whereas it might deliver some limited reforms, was a continuation of the economic and social agenda of Thatcherism. Here is the Next Left in February 1996 over a year before Blair's famous victory, commenting on the politics of the New Labour leadership: `The consequences of this approach are clear. The demands of global capital for a flexible workforce will be satisfied by a supply side approach to the economy stressing education and training. It will not lead to an expanded economy and therefore the social ills which follow, in particular those of disaffected youngsters hanging about the street will be dealt with by authoritarian measures.' With the exception of New Labour's expansion of the economy on basis
of low wage, service sector growth and a credit explosion, The Next Left
got it about right. The key to answering this, is to grasp that New Labour's strategy was and is taking the neoliberal tenets discredited after the poverty, inequality and de-industrialisation of the Tories years, and re-inventing them as a kind of social pact. The pact was summed up in the rights and responsibilities mantra. This comprised a shift from the state as a provider to the state as an enabler for individuals to `compete' in a global market place. The government would support workers in their task of getting skilled up Ð hence the massive emphasis on education and lifelong learning which one writer in education describes as `HR in drag'. The responsibility side of the equation means that no-one Ð not even the partners of carers it seems - is exempt from contributing to the economy, if deemed eligible to so by the department of work and pensions. Indeed welfare itself has ceased to be universal and instead it is used to help fit workers into the new economic environment driven by global capitalism. This marketising of the individual in relation to employment opportunities was mirrored by the general marketisation of society that you might expect as part of neo liberalism. Here, New Labour tended to simply replicate Tory strategy, with the major departure of granting the Bank of England the freedom from democratic accountability that finance capital has used to fuel the credit driven growth which threatens to drown a vast number of ordinary workers in debt. PFI was made-over as PPP, but it remained a way of levering the private sector into public projects. Much of the infrastructural improvements in education were achieved through PFI/PPP and growth in higher education by making students pay through top-up or deferred fees and of course introducing a market as a consequence. Under Blair, even more explicitly than under Thatcher, we have been told that market mechanisms could deliver the public good and that we must be pragmatic about it. . `What works is what is right.' It is a lie. Let's look at Kevin Maguire's list. He starts with health. Two measures tend to offer good general guides to differences in health - infant mortality rates (deaths in the first year of life per 1000 live births) and life expectancies at birth. The UK does not compare well with other European states in either of these. Glasgow's recent figures were appalling. And although the relationship between government expenditure and health is a complex one, in comparison with its EU counterparts the UK is a low spender with, for example, a relatively low female life expectancy. This highlights another aspect of New Labour's philosophy. Under Blair and Brown the UK has refused to increase taxation and its capacity, therefore, to make increased spending that matches its European partners, as opposed to its own historic low levels, is extremely limited. In health too we find the continuity with Thatcher and the break with social Democracy, Devolution. For here also, for example through foundation hospitals, the market mechanism is expected to drive inefficiencies out of the system, despite the demonstrable failure, indeed perverse consequences, of just that strategy in the railways. Let us consider one more example of Maguire's list, before considering
Blair's stance on international perspectives - the alleged redistributive
benefits of tax credits. The children's tax credit and the working family
tax, hailed as progressive measures are `targeted'. They are part of a
shift away from universal welfare towards an increase in means testing
that includes incapacity and widow's benefits, pensions and legal aid.
Furthermore they function as a way of supporting workers to take jobs
with very poor pay helping the transition to the low wage, flexible economy
that is the reality of employment in Britain today. Miles away from the
rhetoric of the high skill, high wage, knowledge economy Blair promised.
Another big lie from the New Labour leadership. It should be said that in relation to domestic policy there is no political space between Blair and Brown. Indeed the latter may well have been the architect of much of it. However, in international adventurism, it is Blair who seems to have led the way albeit with, at the very least, the acquiescence of the cabinet, including Brown. None of the domestic policies pursued by New Labour necessarily forced them into the close alliance with the US which has led Britain into supporting a string of interventions, the most disastrous of which is undoubtedly the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Blair's backing of Bush is almost certainly economic in origin and an integral part of his and New Labour's marriage to corporate capital. To begin with the US and UK economies are interdependent. In 2000, Britain invested £178 billion in the US, by far and away the most favoured recipient of British capital. The financial attraction is mutual. In 2002 the US invested $255 billion in the UK, around a third of the total US investment in Europe. Furthermore much of the banking and finance sector in the UK is now owned by US interests. And then of course we have to consider the issue of oil. Britain can still boast of two of the World's largest transnational oil companies in BP- Amoco and Shell, but it no longer has the imperial armies and military might to defend their interests. That job has been undertaken by the US. Consider how US forces have sought to extirpate opposition to the pipeline being built in Columbia by a consortium, OCENSA which is BP led and consider the billions paid into presidential and congressional campaigns by BP. It was clear before the war in Iraq that the US would only invite to the table of the victors those who had taken part in bloodshed. Russia and France, for example, were not going to be welcome. But Britain, by dint of its enthusiastic support, even without UN backing and of course with no consideration of the human cost at all, made sure of its place. And so it was the UK went to war again in the interests of global capital and greed. And now the Middle East is on fire. Thousands are dead and many more will die. There are those, as Madrid and the Trade centre has shown us who will act to ensure that death and destruction are not absent from the cities of Western Europe. We should not assume that Blair has got this far easily and he is increasingly under pressure and exposed as an illusionist in Labour Party matters, in domestic and in foreign affairs. He said he would not change clause four in the run up to the leadership election. He lied. He said he would not introduce top-up fees. He lied He said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. He lied He said the opposition in Iraq was Saddam supporters and foreign infiltrators. He lied. He promised us a roadmap to peace in the Middle East. He lied. If we do not expose these lies and end Blair and New Labour Policies and political stances, we may well play a part in making the world even less safe. This is Blair addressing the issue of Iraq in March of this year. `Containment will not work in the face of the global threat that confronts us. The terrorists have no intention of being contained. The states that proliferate or acquire WMD illegally are doing so precisely to avoid containment. Emphatically I am not saying that every situation leads to military action. But we surely have a duty and a right to prevent the threat materialising; and we surely have a responsibility to act when a nation's people are subjected to a regime such as Saddam's. Otherwise, we are powerless to fight the aggression and injustice which over time puts at risk our security and way of life.' In other words he wants to enshrine the right of the pre-emptive strike. He wants to offer carte blanche to imperialism to act whenever and wherever it deems there is a `threat materialising'. There is no room for compromise here. Let us work within the Labour movement to make sure that this year is Blair's last as leader of New Labour led dominance. For if we fail, it may well be the last for many innocents the world over. |
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