Politics Index

Etonocracy

June 30th, 2007 admin

When I was undergrad a few years ago, I attended a private talk with Michael Heseltine - supposedly one of the leaders of the Tory party's liberal wing. These were talks held under the Chatham House Rule - that is, the entire speech is held off-the-record to allow the speaker to be as candid as possible and therefore cannot be quoted by any of the attendees. Whoops.

Heseltine gave one of the best Marxist analyses of the Tory party that I have ever heard. He explained that the Tories were a coalition of privileged interests. Indeed, the main purpose of the party was to preserve and defend privilege. The way that the Tories won elections, he explained, was by giving just enough to the rest of society. To someone like myself who - like millions of others - had attended a Northern comp, this was one of the most shocking things that I'd ever heard and remains seared on my memory. However, practically everyone else in the room were from Southern public schools. No-one even blinked.

Today's Tory leadership is a stark illustration of Heseltine's analysis. 14 members of Cameron's front bench are Old Etonians. Others, such as George Osborne (the artist formerly known as 'Gideon') went to equally privileged schools such as St Paul's School. Many are connected to the landed gentry and can trace their family lineage back centuries. As the insert photo shows, many of these Tories have known each other for decades - often by being members of exclusive upper-class drinking societies and gentlemen's clubs.

Many of today's leading Tories are former members of the Oxford University Conservative Association. OUCA is not so much a political association as a rightwing public school drinking society. Members of today's OUCA (and we can take for granted that it is no worse than it was twenty years ago) have to be seen to be believed. Their members waltz around in tweed jackets that were probably out of fashion in the late 19th Century. One of the many songs sung by OUCA (and no, this is not a joke) is "We hate the working class." These people don't just have contempot for ordinary people (who, these days, they tend to call "chavs" or even "peasants"). Hatred is a better word.

Now, in my opinion, whoever wins elections, the same people tend to remain in power - bankers, big businessmen, bureaucrats, multinational companies, the corporate media, and the White House. However, with the potential return to power of the Tory party, we face the prospect of the direct political rule of the most reactionary elements in British society.

Be afraid. Be very afraid...

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Brown’s Cabinet, a move to the right!!

June 29th, 2007 admin

After looking at the cabinet appointments, I feel that we now know that Brown has not listened to the grassroots and has appointed a right wingers to the cabinet. Good on Jon Cruddas for standing on his principles and it seems that people such as John McDonnell and grim up north have been not just right but under estimated how right winf we could get!!

Wiseman

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Outrage

June 29th, 2007 admin

For anyone with any remaining illusions in Gordon Brown, today's news that Sir Digby Jones - the former Chairman of the Confederation of British Industry - will be entering the Government should serve as an alarming wake-up call.

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Satire is dead

June 28th, 2007 admin

When Henry Kissinger - one of the great mass murderers of the 20th Century - was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, US comedian Tom Lehrer declared that "satire is dead". Now that Tony Blair is to become the Quartet's official Middle East envoy, you can't help thinking the same thing.

Other than George W Bush himself (who - obviously - promoted Blair for the new job), no-one else has greater responsibility for the invasion and occupation of Iraq and the subsequent hellish violence and chaos.

What's next? Robert Mugabe for UN Human Rights Commissioner? Jim Davidson for Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality? Jeremy Clarkson as Environment Secretary?

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The balance sheet of Blairism

June 27th, 2007 admin

As Blair's departure sinks in, I've written my own thoughts on the record of New Labour's first decade in power.

In the post-war period, there have been two governments that have transformed the political consensus. Attlee's landslide in 1945 ushered in welfare capitalism, not least by founding the National Health Service; created a mixed economy by nationalising strategic industries; and began the process of decolonisation by withdrawing from India.

Thatcherism represented a equally seismic shift to the right, smashing the postwar political consensus. Thatcher undertook a programme of mass privatisation that ended the mixed economy; broke the manufacturing base of the British economy in favour of a hire-and-fire service sector; dramatically slashed direct taxation on the wealthy; and crippled the power of the once mighty British labour movement.

Despite a landslide victory in 1997, a decade of New Labour has produced no new political consensus of an even comparable magnitude. It boasts no major new institutions or dramatic economic, social or political changes to the old status quo. The British social structure remains much as it was ten years ago. Hyperbolic comparisons with the Thatcherite 1980s are wrong: we haven't suffered a systematic offensive against working people combined with mass unemployment and a whole host of ultra-regressive social reforms. Instead, the past decade has represented both a period of retrenchment and continuity. Its relationship to Thatcherism is similar to that between the council house-building Tory governments of the 1950s and the Attlee government.

During the deputy leadership contest, Alan Johnson suggested that New Labour had shifted the centre ground to the left, which the Tories now wanted to follow. The recent Tory row over grammar schools is often cited as an example of this. In actual fact, on this issue (as on so many others), New Labour has effectively met the Tories halfway by driving through policies which are fragmenting and marketising education.

That is not to say there have not been welcome progressive reforms. Before 1997, workers could be legally paid £2 an hour; in the teeth of Tory and CBI opposition, a minimum wage has been introduced with the support of the entire labour movement. Maternity pay has been increased. Unemployment is down as compared with the Tory years. Billions of pounds have been invested in public services. All three and four year olds are now entitled to free nursery education. Section 28 has been repealed, the age of consent has been equalised and gay men and women now have the right to civil partnerships. Devolution in Scotland and Wales. There is peace in the North of Ireland. All of this shows that the worst Labour government is better than the "best" Tory government (whatever that is...)

Many of these achievements have big "buts" attached. The minimum wage is still poverty pay and, as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation pointed out in 2004, Britain continues to have a "low pay culture." The huge investment in public services has often been disastrously undermined by policies of privatisation and marketisation - often in areas where the Tories had not dared to go. 1.7 million workers are still unemployed - that is, 5.5%, as compared to 4.7% in 1979 when the Tories were able to make it the main issue of the general election campaign. Not only is there still effectively mass unemployment - but millions are trapped in the low wage McJobs of the hire-and-fire service sector. Greater rights for gays are welcome, but in large part these laws were reflections rather than causes of irresistible social changes below: even the Tories lowered the gay age of consent in the early 1990s.

In many areas, policies introduced by New Labour have been outright reactionary. Top-up fees are leaving students in thousands of pounds worth of debt, deterring working-class kids from going to university, and threatening to introduce an internal market to university education. Foundation hospitals are creating a two-tier NHS. Academy schools backed by rich donors have permitted Christian fundamentalist take-overs of certain schools; while trust schools are marketising and fragmenting our education system. Faith schools (i.e. religiously segregated schools) are beginning to flourish under New Labour. Civil liberties have come under systematic attack for a decade. Billions of pounds are to be wasted on nuclear weapons.

In other areas, New Labour have simply maintained the Thatcherite status quo. Despite the Labour party being funded by trade unions to the tune of £100m since 1997, Britain remains - in the words of Tony Blair - the country "most restrictive on trade unions in the western world." That Britain remains in total contravention of its obligations under International Labour Organisation Conventions after a decade of a Labour Government is nothing less than a scandal. Furthermore, New Labour has refused to reverse deeply unpopular Tory policies such as the privatisation of the railways, despite overwhelming support for renationalisation.

There are several statistics which represent damning indictments of the failure of this Government to transform society in any meaningful sense. Inequality is at the same level as it was under Margaret Thatcher - allowing the grotesque sight of a Tory leader being able to posture to the left of a Labour Government on the issue. There are 3.8 million children living in poverty; although that has decreased overall over the past decade, child poverty has begun to increase again. In the first 8 years of New Labour government, homelessness increased by a staggering 100,000 - in other words, more than double the level of 1997. Despite a growing housing crisis, the government has refused to invest in building council housing. The number of people in prison is now at the record high of 80,977 - the highest in Europe.

And, of course, there is what New Labour will above all be remembered for - the invasion and occupation of Iraq in alliance with George W Bush's administration. The Iraq war wasn't a "bad" or a "wrong" policy: it was and is a crime. This war was carried out under false pretences and in defiance of popular opinion, a demonstration of 2 million, and a rebellion of 139 Labour MPs. According to a peer-reviewed report by prestigious medical journal The Lancet last November, over 650,000 Iraqis had died and 1.5 million have been made refugees as a direct result of the invasion and occupation and Iraq has been plunged into a nightmare-ish violent chaos. It will be years before we fully appreciate the scale of the horror of the greatest crime of our age.

Finally, there is the legacy of what Blairism has done to the Labour party. Membership is now (at most) 182,000 - well under half of the 407,000 peak a decade ago. The number of actual activists is much lower. Labour's councillor base has plumetted - mostly because of the refusal of so many natural Labour supporters to vote - leaving millions with Tory or Liberal councils. In many real senses, the Labour party is imploding.

The notion that Tony Blair is singlehandedly responsible for Labour's popularity is a myth. Labour enjoyed a solid lead in the opinion polls from August 1992 and particularly after Black Friday. Under John Smith, Labour enjoyed ratings of up to 49% as compared to 27% for the Tories. Labour's landslide in 1997 can be as much explained by the total discrediting of the Tories as anything else. From then on, Blair had to face a weak, divided opposition led by laughable figures such as William Hague and Iain Duncan-Smith. In the 2005 General Election, Labour won by the smallest majority of any winning party in the history of British democracy; and only one in five of eligible voters voted for it. Indeed, 500,000 more people voted for Labour in 1987 when it lost the election.

As Blair finally leaves Number 10, it is clear that ten years of New Labour represents a combination of some diluted progressive social reforms, a series of regressive and outright reactionary measures, continuity with Thatcherism, and a total failure to transform society in any meaningful sense. The murderous occupation of Iraq will be forever carved on the gravestone of New Labour.

And the real tragedy is that - under the unelected leadership of Gordon Brown - we now face the prospect of Blairism without Blair. Unless there is a change of political direction, the very future of the Labour party has to remain in doubt.

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