The former Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Roy Hattersley, begins his column in The Guardian as follows: “The admission of error is never easy – even for someone of natural humble disposition. But having mis-judged Tony Blair for years and repeated my mis-judgements time after time in this column, honour requires me to confess that I am mistaken about an important aspect of his character. While others accused him of mouthing whatever prejudices reports from focus groups made politically appealing. I argued that that he always said what he honestly believed. I was wrong.”
He goes on to advertise that he now believes the principle that drives Blair and New Labour is the continual drive to ‘outflank’ the Tories. “It is the reason why Tony Blair talks dangerous nonsense about “choice” in the public sector. It is why education authorities who preserve selective secondary schools are allowed to prejudice the futures of thousands of children. It is why the trade unions and local government are dismissed as a relic of old Labour inefficiency.”
Neal Lawson, chair of the democratic left pressure group Compass agrees – up to a point. As he sees it, the choice agenda is indeed about what he describes as “crude politics”:
“If it wasn’t advocating choice, New Labour calculates the Tories would be. Despite spending record amounts of money, New Labour denies the space for a Tory revival by doing everything that comes naturally to the Conservatives, such as promoting markets. So we win on the power swings but lose out on principles. In the process, we demoralise our own members and supporters while pulling the rug from under the feet of new collective ways of delivering services.”
But to his credit Neal, unlike Roy, doesn’t stop there. No, New Labour motivation is not just practical politics motivated from the simple pleasure of occupying Tory ground. Something far more fundamental lurks behind or beneath the shallow desire for political power for its own sake. The real inspiration is, Lawson concludes, at heart an ideological one.
“Crucially the choice agenda speaks to the heart of New Labour’s political economy. Choice creates profitable markets for the private sector and therefore helps to sustain the UK economy. This process of commodification sees New Labour happily kneel before the demands of global markets.
This is what makes New Labour Neo-Labour – its inversion of social democracy as a project to make people the masters of markets. Instead, the limited ambition of Neo-Labour is to help us become more efficient slaves to the market. The wider political hope is that choice socialises people to competition and the economy’s individualistic culture. By removing the cushion of a universal welfare system, Neo-Labour hopes to prepare us emotionally and practically for the rigours of market competition.”
“Neo- Labour hopes to prepare us emotionally and practically for the rigours of market competition.” If true, when stripped down, Blair is at least ideological as Thatcher, and moreover his ambitions and enemies are identical. Like her, his ambition is all about creating a new society working on what increasingly appears to be a pre-democratic model with predictably vast implications for us all. See Eventually values and interests merge
Inevitably, despite – or more accurately because of – him being a conviction politican Blair is not short of admirers. “Prescient, brave, eloquent, and in charge…a prime minister not just a party leader” was how Charles Moore, former editor of The Daily Telegraph, described him last year.
His devotion is shared by Michael Gove of The Times, now a Conservative M.P.: “I can’t fight my feelings any more. I love Tony…as a right-wing polemicist, all I can say looking at Mr Blair now, what’s not to like?” In America neo-cons are delighted to acknowledge him as a fellow traveller.
If Lawson and Compass are not prepared to follow their analysis to its inevitable conclusion – at least not yet – they are at least half way there for which they deserve congratulations, whereas Hattersley who once, a decade or so ago, fatuously declared that the ‘class war was over’ and then recanted years later, is shown to be woefully out of step again. Indeed he manages to be wrong at both ends the argument. Yes the Blair strategy might be about ‘crude politics’ but in conceding that Hattersley concludes that Blair no longer be relied upon to say what ‘he honestly believes’.
On the contrary he has always said what he means and means what he says. Which is precisely what makes him and New Labour such a formidable enemy of the working class. What undoubtedly helps, is that what might be loosely termed the middle class left, the self-selected ‘opposition’ steadfastedly and resolutely deny at every opportunity the sheer scale of New Labour political ambition. ‘Know your enemy’ is the first principle of warfare: a reality all too many within and without refuse to adjust to.
Was it the ‘prejudices of focus groups’ that led to the war in Iraq? Anyone like to identify the focus group that demanded New Labour, with fists clenched, bank on Germany’s answer to Thatcher, Frau Merkel, displacing the social democratic Herr Schroder?
Meanwhile as well as describing the latest attempts at reform of the NHS, a survey of NHS chief executives published in the Health Service Journal, among other things decribed health secretary, Patricia Hewitt’s plans as “incoherent”, “destructive” and “frantic”, while a staggering 65% regarded the primary motive as “political”. Which is to say idelogical rather than organisational.
The former Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Roy Hattersley, begins his column in The Guardian as follows: “The admission of error is never easy – even for someone of natural humble disposition. But having mis-judged Tony Blair for years and repeated my mis-judgements time after time in this column, honour requires me to confess that I am mistaken about an important aspect of his character. While others accused him of mouthing whatever prejudices reports from focus groups made politically appealing. I argued that that he always said what he honestly believed. I was wrong.”
He goes on to advertise that he now believes the principle that drives Blair and New Labour is the continual drive to ‘outflank’ the Tories. “It is the reason why Tony Blair talks dangerous nonsense about “choice” in the public sector. It is why education authorities who preserve selective secondary schools are allowed to prejudice the futures of thousands of children. It is why the trade unions and local government are dismissed as a relic of old Labour inefficiency.”
Neal Lawson, chair of the democratic left pressure group Compass agrees – up to a point. As he sees it, the choice agenda is indeed about what he describes as “crude politics”:
“If it wasn’t advocating choice, New Labour calculates the Tories would be. Despite spending record amounts of money, New Labour denies the space for a Tory revival by doing everything that comes naturally to the Conservatives, such as promoting markets. So we win on the power swings but lose out on principles. In the process, we demoralise our own members and supporters while pulling the rug from under the feet of new collective ways of delivering services.”
But to his credit Neal, unlike Roy, doesn’t stop there. No, New Labour motivation is not just practical politics motivated from the simple pleasure of occupying Tory ground. Something far more fundamental lurks behind or beneath the shallow desire for political power for its own sake. The real inspiration is, Lawson concludes, at heart an ideological one.
“Crucially the choice agenda speaks to the heart of New Labour’s political economy. Choice creates profitable markets for the private sector and therefore helps to sustain the UK economy. This process of commodification sees New Labour happily kneel before the demands of global markets.
This is what makes New Labour Neo-Labour – its inversion of social democracy as a project to make people the masters of markets. Instead, the limited ambition of Neo-Labour is to help us become more efficient slaves to the market. The wider political hope is that choice socialises people to competition and the economy’s individualistic culture. By removing the cushion of a universal welfare system, Neo-Labour hopes to prepare us emotionally and practically for the rigours of market competition.”
“Neo- Labour hopes to prepare us emotionally and practically for the rigours of market competition.” If true, when stripped down, Blair is at least ideological as Thatcher, and moreover his ambitions and enemies are identical. Like her, his ambition is all about creating a new society working on what increasingly appears to be a pre-democratic model with predictably vast implications for us all. See Eventually values and interests merge
Inevitably, despite – or more accurately because of – him being a conviction politican Blair is not short of admirers. “Prescient, brave, eloquent, and in charge…a prime minister not just a party leader” was how Charles Moore, former editor of The Daily Telegraph, described him last year.
His devotion is shared by Michael Gove of The Times, now a Conservative M.P.: “I can’t fight my feelings any more. I love Tony…as a right-wing polemicist, all I can say looking at Mr Blair now, what’s not to like?” In America neo-cons are delighted to acknowledge him as a fellow traveller.
If Lawson and Compass are not prepared to follow their analysis to its inevitable conclusion – at least not yet – they are at least half way there for which they deserve congratulations, whereas Hattersley who once, a decade or so ago, fatuously declared that the ‘class war was over’ and then recanted years later, is shown to be woefully out of step again. Indeed he manages to be wrong at both ends the argument. Yes the Blair strategy might be about ‘crude politics’ but in conceding that Hattersley concludes that Blair no longer be relied upon to say what ‘he honestly believes’.
On the contrary he has always said what he means and means what he says. Which is precisely what makes him and New Labour such a formidable enemy of the working class. What undoubtedly helps, is that what might be loosely termed the middle class left, the self-selected ‘opposition’ steadfastedly and resolutely deny at every opportunity the sheer scale of New Labour political ambition. ‘Know your enemy’ is the first principle of warfare: a reality all too many within and without refuse to adjust to.
Was it the ‘prejudices of focus groups’ that led to the war in Iraq? Anyone like to identify the focus group that demanded New Labour, with fists clenched, bank on Germany’s answer to Thatcher, Frau Merkel, displacing the social democratic Herr Schroder?
Meanwhile as well as describing the latest attempts at reform of the NHS, a survey of NHS chief executives published in the Health Service Journal, among other things decribed health secretary, Patricia Hewitt’s plans as “incoherent”, “destructive” and “frantic”, while a staggering 65% regarded the primary motive as “political”. Which is to say idelogical rather than organisational.