Beyond belief

tim — Sun, 25 May 2008 20:52:35 +0000

Any sensible Labour strategist would do well to heed left MP John McDonnell’s call for the party to focus on policies rathern than personalities, given the Brown government’s drubbing over the past month.

The batterings which Labour received in the local elections and the disastrous Crewe and Nantwich by-election are inextricably linked to its abandonment of working people and its clammy embrace of big business.

Witness the furore over the scrapping of the 10p tax rate, the looming summer of public-sector strikes over pay and the mounting fury – even unto the middle classes – at the decadent money-go-round that characterises Britain’s boardrooms.

As the GMB union has pointed out, City bonuses have risen to a record £12.6 billion at a time when the financial sector is allegedly tightening its belt due to the so-called credit crunch, sparking suspicions that bosses are simply snaffling the £50 billion kindly provided by the generous British public to revitalise the sector.

The alleged City regulator, the Financial Services Authority, is already known as the Fundamentally Supine Authority for its weak-kneed reluctance to do its job and prevent the finance sector from imploding out of sheer greed.

And now we face the prospect of former CBI chief Adair Turner – a man whose career has revolved around lobbying for ever-weaker regulation of business – becoming the new FSA chairman, appointed by, of course, this Whitehall farce of a new Labour government.

If this is what Gordon Brown means when he declares himself the right person to “steer the British economy through what have been very difficult times,” then his MPs had better start looking in the jobs section of their local paper.

If anyone thinks that Lord Turner would lift a finger to prevent another Northern Rock debacle, or act to rein in City bosses’ excessive bonuses, or seriously investigate where all these billions are actually coming from, as GMB has called for, then they are either in need of serious medical attention or are members of the Cabinet. Or both.

John McDonnell has repeatedly pointed out that the Labour Party needs to rediscover its socialist soul and begin implementing the progressive policies that will help drag it out of the neoliberal hole that it has dug for itself.

Instead, we see a flurry of Blairite and Brownite lackeys squabbling over which brand of warmed-over Thatcherism should reign supreme and issuing denials and counter-denials as to whether any of the fourth-rate “personalities” among their number will plunge a stiletto between Mr Brown’s shoulderblades.

And, while they bicker over how best to rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic, the ship steams happily towards electoral oblivion.

Putting a fox like Lord Turner in charge of the City chicken coop makes about as much sense as putting the fevered egos of Cabinet ministers ahead of the good of the working people of this country, but it appears that good sense and original thinking are in scant supply in Downing Street.

FSA | ukwatch.net

Beyond belief