UPDATED:  AUG 11, 2007

THE END OF BLAIR (3) 

It is now more than a month since Blair left office and for most of the British media he is already - like yesterday’s news – best forgotten. It is tempting to turn the page and - in a phrase frequently used by Blair when trying to deflect attention from Iraq - to move on. But for the past ten years the Blairite “New Labour” project has done so much damage, not least to the Labour Party in whose name it was launched, that it cannot be so easily passed over. 

In these columns I shall continue to call Blair and his New Labour confederates to account for their malfeasance in both domestic and foreign affairs. In my column on July 29^th I compared him to three earlier, unloved prime ministers, James Ramsay MacDonald, Neville Chamberlain and Anthony Eden. I concluded that Blair was one of the worst ever to have held that office. This argument will be developed more fully in due course, but for the moment I want to turn to his successor – Gordon Brown.  

It is well known that Brown and Blair hated each other. It has been reliably reported through leaks from their close associates that occasionally they confronted each other in violent and abusive shouting matches. It seems that such confrontations were rarely about matters of high policy. It was largely personal. Brown and Blair were joint architects of the “New Labour” project back in the mid 1990s and there is no evidence that Brown seriously dissented from any of the major policies associated with Blair. It was not simply a matter of needing to maintain cabinet unity. As Chancellor of the Exchequer Brown was as eager as Blair to promote the dominance of the private sector in every area of the economy and it was he, who, in the face of strong opposition from London’s mayor, Ken Livingstone, and with foreseeable disastrous consequences insisted on the “public/private/partnership” (PPP) financing for the much needed modernisation of the London Tube (subway) system. 

There is no evidence that Brown was opposed to the invasion of Iraq. Unlike some cabinet ministers, who, occasionally timidly hinted that they were not happy with Blair’s miserable and disastrous cow-towing to Bush, Brown gave no hint of any disagreement and actually went out of his way to rush to Blair’s assistance whenever it seemed necessary.  

During the last year of Blair’s premiership the Tories, now led by a youngish Blair-like would be celebrity, David Cameron, established, and steadily increased a lead in the opinion polls. Under his leadership the Tory party attempted to occupy the same “centre ground” of British politics as New Labour and the Liberal-Democrats. Thus we shad the spectacle of all three mainstream political parties in Britain vying with each other to occupy the same space! The argument of all three (in so far as they attempted to formulate a coherent political argument) was that no party deemed to be outside this hallowed “centre ground” stood any chance of being elected. It may be objected that this is unfair to the Liberal Democrats, who, to their credit, opposed the invasion of Iraq. However, the Lib.Dems., fearful of being denounced in the tabloid press as “unpatriotic”, immediately announced their unqualified support for British troops once the invasion had started. Most of the polls taken prior to Blair leaving office showed that the Tory lead over Labour would remain unchanged, or that it might even increase, once Brown had taken over. Brown, it seemed, was no more popular than Blair. These poll forecasts have turned out to be wrong. 

Within a week of taking office Brown faced two major crises. Two terrorist bomb attacks were thwarted, though in both cases their failure owed more to the incompetence of the perpetrators and the courage of the public than to the vigilance of the security services. Then, following the heaviest summer rainfall since records began, in June and July large areas, first of northern England and later of central parts of the country, were flooded. Thousands of people have had to evacuate their homes as cities such as Gloucester, Tewkesbury and Oxford have been deluged. These are the worst floods since 1947. Much of the television coverage was reminiscent of the scenes in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina.  

In his response to all this Brown appeared stolid, reliable and reassuring. He seemed to epitomise the Scottish Presbyterian background from which he comes. The style contrasted markedly with Blair. The appearance of government had changed overnight. New faces appeared in the cabinet. Those closely associated with Blair were relegated to the back benches. Notably, John Reid and Margaret Beckett (Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary), both disliked and widely regarded, respectively, as bullying and incompetent, were replaced by David Miliband and Jacqui Smith. (It is of some interest to note that the new foreign secretary, who accompanied Gordon Brown to the U.S. on his first visit to Bush, is the son of Ralph Miliband - now deceased - who was one of Britain’s most brilliant Marxist academics and mentor to the 1960s generation of radical students). David and his brother Ed are amongst the youngest members of Brown’s cabinet. Both served Blair loyally but were always suspected of being closer to Brown. David is almost certain to be groomed as a future prime minister. Perhaps also of some interest to those fascinated by the subject of filial loyalty, is the fact that Hilary Benn, Brown’s Minister of the Environment, is the son – yes son - of one of New Labour’s most severe critics, the left-wing veteran parliamentarian Tony Benn, who retired as an MP some years ago to devote himself (in his own words) to “serious politics”. Now in his eighties, Tony Benn has become more radical with age. In the case of the Milibands and the Benns, the sons have drifted rightwards from their parents.  

There is no doubt that the appearance and style of Brown’s government is very different from Blair’s. At the time of writing (2^nd August) the Labour Party leads the Tories in the opinion polls by about seven points. The Tories have just been pushed to third place in two by elections, both won by Labour, (one in Blair’s old constituency of Sedgefield which became vacant on his resignation from parliament). The Tories are in complete disarray and Cameron’s leadership appears to be in question. If, as seems likely, there is a general election early next year, Labour is almost certain to win. So, most commentators agree, Brown has got off to a flying start. Expectations of a new beginning and the jettisoning of Blairite policies are high. But how well founded are such expectations?  

There is little reason to expect any real change in policy from Brown. He knows how unpopular Blair had become and in order to extricate himself from the mire of spin, duplicity and corruption into which New Labour has sunk, he needs to create the impression of a new beginning. In order to undermine the Tory demand for a new (Tory) government, he needs to create the impression that there has actually been a change of government without an election. But, in all essentials things remain the same. 

To illustrate this I’ll mention one recent news item that has received too little attention in the press coverage of Brown’s first month in office. 

In his re-shuffle of Blair’s cabinet, Brown left in place the secretary of state for defence – one Des Browne, a man for whom the word “hapless” might have been invented. His defence of the policies he espouses is uninspired to put it mildly. As is well known, Bush is anxious to involve the UK in his “missile defence system”. This system has been described thus: “Because it doesn’t work, missile defence is the world’s biggest pork barrel. The potential for spending is unlimited….a number of massive – and possibly insuperable – technical problems must be overcome. For the US arms industry, technical failure means permanent commercial success”. (George Monbiot. The Guardian. 31.07.07.) Two days before the summer recess the government rushed through 46 policy decisions that cannot be debated. This is a common but shabby practice. Parliament had earlier been promised a debate before any decision was taken to grant Bush the use of Menwith Hill, a listening post in North Yorkshire, for his missile defence system. Des Browne announced that this site will be made available to the US “to address the emerging threat from rogue states”. “This”, writes Monbiot,”is a claim that only an idiot or a member of the British government could believe.” He concludes that “having been dragged by the Bush administration into two incipient military defeats, the British government has now embraced another of its global delusions.” 

So much for Gordon Brown’s vaunted claim that power would be returned to parliament. No debate! No consultation!  Expect more of the same.

NEXT- JUNKIES SPEAK

Last Update: 08/18/2007