Brexit: Blair paved the way

The policies of Tony Blair and New Labour paved the way for Brexit.

Tony Blair is rightly loathed. For the left, Blair takes pride of place among the Judas Iscariots, Vidkun Quislings and Ramsey MacDonalds. But should we re-evaluate him in light of his opposition to Brexit? Can the progressive left share a platform with this war criminal? The answer is a resounding no on multiple grounds. But one basic reason, often not singled out, is that Blair did more than anyone else to pave the way for the disastrous referendum result of June 2016. How is that so?

The New Labour government took steps to make sure that the UK became a Mecca for central and east European casual workers. In 2004, ten states, mostly former ‘socialist’ countries, joined the EU. Britain was one of only three (the other two were Ireland and Sweden) that immediately permitted workers from the new member states to take up employment in Britain’s weakly regulated employment market. Blair’s reasons were seemingly simple: to provide labour in Britain’s credit boom economy, keep wages down and see xenophobia prevent a united working class response to growing inequality.

As New Labour embraced marketisation, praised wealthy oligarchs, ciritised and privatised the public sector and marginalised trade unions, economic inequality continued to grow. Blair did not give birth to the ‘left behind’ in the post-industrial wastelands; Thatcher had already done that. But he did take away hope that Labour could make a difference to the lives of ordinary working people. As hope evaporated, especially following the financial crisis of 2008, anomic anger exploded and the 2016 referendum provided an outlet for that anger for the Barnsleys, Stokes and Hartlepools.

But even so why did so many in Britain think the UK was different and better, so that it could profitably stand alone, while the rest of Europe needed the EU? After all, economic analysis suggests the exact opposite. Post imperial illusions played a part, but the single biggest injection of national arrogance were Blair’s wars around the globe. With the exception of France, Britain is the only military power in the EU. And Blair, locked in an alliance with the US, loved military might. With Gordon Brown in tow, he promoted militarism, relished it, thereby bolstering the myth of British difference, superiority and strength.

And Blair’s was also responsible for Brexit for what he didn’t do. In 2002 he could have overcome Brown’s opposition and taken the UK into the Euro. Yes, had other things been the same, Britain would have had a worse recession in 2008, but Brexit would have been just too difficult to contemplate in 2016.

So when Blair gets up to put the case for reversing Brexit - and he does so rather eloquently - we should remember his role in bringing it about. In this, as in everything else, Blair is the consummate hypocrite.

Chesterfield Socialist Conference 1987

The Chesterfield Socialist Conference of 1987 attempted to revitalise the left in Britain. Instead it marked its demise.

The year 1987 was an important year, not just because I failed my driving test the day after Mrs Thatcher won her third term in office, but because – although I did not know it at the time – events that year would signal a speeding up in the collapse of the left in Britain.

In October 1987, the first Socialist Conference was held in Chesterfield, the mining constituency which Tony Been famously won in a byelection in 1984. Ralph Miliband described the conference, which brought together the Labour left with several outside groups and parties, as the biggest meeting of socialists since the Leeds Convention in 1918. Benn, Miliband and Eric Heffer all gave powerful orations in the hope of heralding in a rebirth of the radical left in British politics.

Yet, it was not to be. Kinnock (with Hattersley, Smith, Kaufmann and the then youngsters Blair and Brown in tow) announced a policy review, misnamed ‘Labour Listens’ which meant that the leadership listened to everybody except socialists. The remaining socialist policies were either dropped or sidelined. Inside the party de-democratisation took hold and the socialist left was marginalised or expelled. In this stifling atmosphere of party discipline, Kinnock stumbled on until losing to the Tories yet again in 1992.

John Smith’s leadership 1992-94 promised a Labour Party consolidation on the basis of some kind of mild social democracy – and, but for his death, he would have taken Labour to victory in 1997.

But that was not to be, either. In 1994 (the last contested Labour leadership election until 2010), desperate for success, Labour elected Tony Blair, whose drift to the right in the next decade and half would have been unimaginable in the early nineties. So New Labour was born and the Left and socialism ceased to be.

Blair's New Labour: Ending Labour as a progressive movement

The following comment, penned in October 2006 during the Blair New Labour years, remains an accurate description of the period, especially in predicting David Cameron's election in 2010. What I did not foresee was the Financial Crisis of 2008 or the rise of Jeremy Corbyn in 2015.

Blair's New Labour is a reactionary creed and has destroyed the Labour Party as a progressive party

There are some elections which mark a transformation in the body politic, such as 1945 and 1979. There are others which mark its continuation; I see 1951 and 1997 as elections which are mostly about new management teams to administer the status quo. Until Britain's two historic parties of left and right have both had a turn in Number 10, one cannot talk of a new consensus. Mr Blair's role was to consolidate the Thatcherite consensus; he has done so admirably well.

There are two practices of New Labour which stifled left and progressive forces. The first happened inside the Labour Party: the defeat of social democracy and the establishment of a top-down, managerial non-democratic party structure. The second is ongoing: the political practice of triangulation; i.e. moving so far to the right on policies (e.g. civil liberties) that the Conservative opposition can only utter me-tooisms, (like David Cameron) or else take refuge in lonnyland (like John Redwood). Triangulation, though, is only possible because Blair faces no threat to his left flank (Cf. Schroeder with the Greens and the Linkspartei/PDS).

Some people point out that Labour's social and educational policies have improved the lot of the worst-off in the inner cities. I acknowledge the point that vis-à-vis the Tories New Labour has higher social spending because if it did not there would little to sustain New Labour's electoral base. Yet, it should be noted that inequality in the UK continues to grow, and the commercialisation of every aspect of social service provision undermines the collectivist universalistic philosophy on which that social provision was based.

Social democracy sought to modify capitalism so that it functioned at least to some degree in the interests of working people. New Labour has reversed the logic: people need to be modified so that they function for globalised capitalism. While it might often be better to be employed on the minimum wage than to be on the dole, Blairism is a revolting enslaving philosophy that is an anathema to everything the left ever strove for.

Most people in Britain in Blair's decade have experienced rising living standards so there has been a period of political peace and political disengagement. What Iraq did was to thrust the rottenness of New Labour in front of people's faces, and, once the teflon had cracked, mud stuck everywhere. Discontent there is, but sadly it is not channelled constructively, and is it is likely to end up propelling Mr Cameron into government.

Triangulation - New Labour's Modus Operandi

The following comments on triangulation were made in January 2008

Since its assumption of office in 1997, New Labour has unashamedly adopted triangulation as a modus operandi. In the Tory-Labour electoral battle, triangulation consists in New Labour's strategy of adopting policies to the right of Conservative home territory, thus leaving the Tories nowhere to pitch their tent. Blair and Brown have pursued traditional Thatcherite fare: privatisation, PFI and benefit cuts, along with a disregard for civil liberties, sycophantic pro-Americanism, EU bashing and an expansion of religious schools. Only in those areas where either Labour’s pre-election commitment was too strong to abandon (e.g. devolution to Scotland) or where popular feeling is overwhelmingly anti-Thatcherite (e.g. in favour of high levels of spending on health and education), has triangulation not been applied.

Triangulation to be successful, however, has external and internal preconditions. In the external environment, i.e. outside the Labour party, triangulation generally only operates effectively in a two party system in which it is difficult for a new party or an existing smaller party to colonise the territory vacated. In Germany for instance the rightward shift in SPD led to a growth in the reformed communists, with the PDS, capturing territory abandoned by the social democrats.

Internally, the party pursuing the triangulation strategy must have freedom of policy manoeuvre. First, the party leadership must be devoid of principle to perform triangulation manoeuvres. Blair fitted that role perfectly. Further, the rank and file of the party need to be pacified. In the case of New Labour two processes were at work here. One was the process of de-democratisation which progressed step by step from 1980s (expulsions, the downgrading of conference and other elected bodies); the other was a desire to surrender all decision-making to the leadership if that were the price of wining, with the result that a cult of obedience is created. But it is not just the members of the party that need to be silenced, but the interest groups behind the party must be either by-passed or won around. Britain’s Labour supporting trade unions, after eighteen years of Tory government, have clung to the New Labour boat like drowning men, more keen to stay alive than worry about the direction of the boat.

Triangulation, of course, is a strategy not an ideology. Given that triangulation more than anything else has characterised the New Labour’s period of office since 1997, we can explain the ‘empty feel’ of the whole New Labour project. The only ‘ideological’ element injected into the policy, apart from its Thatcherite inheritance, has been Tony Blair’s religious conservatism illustrated in his crusading zeal which he shared with George Bush and which was also evident in his promotion of religious schools.

That the British left has reached a state such as the one described above without serious challenge is an indictment of a whole generation of left-wing people in Britain.

Blair asks Gadaffi not to kill protesters

Blair has phoned Gaddafi and asked him not kill protesters.

If you want to sum up Blair’s politics in a single sentence it would be this: he sought to strengthen capitalist power in Britain and imperialist capitalist power in the world. In partnership with George Bush he promoted the Iraq War with those ends in mind.

In aligning himself with US power, Blair had no problem embracing dictatorships in Saudi Arablia, Egypt and elsewhere. If Gadaffi was prepared to bring his dictatorship on board, that was fine with Blair.

For Blair now to be phoning Gaddafi and asking him not to kill protesters is about as nauseous a piece of hypocrisy as is his professed religious beliefs.

New Labour's Repressive Legacy

Labour can never be a progressive party again unless it confronts its flirtation with authoritarianism while in office.

Since his election to the Labour leadership,Ed Miliband has attempted to shut the door on the excesses of New Labour. Muffled criticism has been heard on Iraq, social inequality and the demise of civic and personal liberties. Nevertheless the overall tone of the Labour leadership is that we should move on. But can the sins of New Labour be so readily forgotten even if not forgiven?

If the left can easily explain, but not forgive, the Iraq fiasco and the boosting of social inequality, there is one aspect of the Blair-Brown years (1997-2010) which needs careful examination, namely New Labour’s assault on civic and personal freedoms. This was no small matter: people incarcerated without trial or public evidence; wide scale intimidatory use of stop and search powers against people on the street, especially photographers; people threatened with prosecution for criticising religion; mass registration of people on the pretext of combating paedophilia… and so on. By 2009 it was possible to talk about the lights going out on liberal democracy in Britain.

The reflex response of some on the left, namely that all this was prompted by the future necessity of repressing the working class, who would rise up in response to the capitalist crisis is surely nonsense. The organised working-class had never been weaker. The key to understanding this phenomenon lies elsewhere.

Many of the repressive measures were due to a cynical populism (detention of supposed would-be terrorists) or a desire to outflank the Tories and the Daily Mail. The security industry is a strong lobby (technology for ID cards and E-Borders); yet there is something else, something more fundamentally rotten.

When the Tories ran Britain (1979-97) they had obvious political and economic objectives, but no clear social one; didn’t Mrs Thatcher say that there was no such thing as society? Politically, the Tories destroyed the institutions of working-class resistance: the trade unions and local councils, many of which, and especially so in urban areas, were in Labour hands. Economically they imposed market fundamentalism on Britain, but socially they cared little about what happened to the swelling ranks of the unemployed. The jobless had scraps of welfare thrown at them and lived in junk estates.

New Labour made minimal attempts to empower and/or ameliorate the conditions of ordinary working people, other than the ephemeral palliative of permitting the intoxicating and ultimately disastrous credit boom. Instead, using the language of ‘responsibility,’ and for Blair ‘communitarianism,’ they deployed state repression to weld everyone into their ‘place’ in Britain's class-divided capitalist society. This, I believe is the true origin of New Labour’s authoritarian statism, and it is something that needs to be fully explored and rejected.

Moving Blair's Autobiography

Surreptitiously moving copies Blair's memoir to the crime section of bookshops is a wholly appropriate thing to do. It is simple, nobody gets hurt and it makes a point.

To the commentator above who worries about customers not being able to locate the book, don't worry. Customers now know where to find it.

And don't worry about inconvenience to shop assistants either. They simply need to direct customers to the crime section.

Blair, Brown and bad politicians

It is very depressing indeed that Britain was managed 1997-2010 by men of low calibre and principle such as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Peter Mandelson is cut from similar cloth.

There is an old saying in politics: shit floats to the top. The only means of part remedying the problem is to have greater openness in government and more accountability by parliament. It is absurd to have the reform of government departments, for instance, brought about or stymied to avoid the tantrums of ministers.

Blair now admits Iraq War to change regime

It is now firmly established that Blair took Britain to war in 2003 on false pretences. He stated in Parliament that Britain would not go to war if Saddam complied with UN resolutions and abandoned his WMDs. Yet his ultimatum was dishonest in two senses. First, Blair, as he now admits, had already made the decision to join the US in a war of regime change. And second Blair had no credible evidence to that Saddam had WMDs.

In international law there is the issue of Britain having taken part in a war of aggression without any legal basis. Just as important, however, is the domestic implication.

What should the penalty be for a man who takes Britain to war by means of telling lies to Parliament and people? This is no small matter. Certainly the death of every British soldier (if not that tens of thousands of Iraqis) is directly attributable to Blair’s dishonesty.

Blair, Iraq & lies

We know that Blair had already decided in 2002 to join the US in a war to topple the regime in Iraq, principally on account of his ideological identification with Bush’s neo-conservative imperial agenda. Blair’s problem was simple: this reason would never wash in Britain. He therefore decided to tell lies.

Blair lied in telling the country that Saddam's refusal to declare and give up his possession of WMDs was the casus belli. This was a lie because Blair had already made the decision to go to war to bring about regime change irrespective of whether Saddam had WMDs.

To support that lie Blair told another lie; namely that he had credible evidence that Iraq possessed WMDs. He had no such evidence; and Iraq possessed no WMDs.

Blair made use of the crown prerogative to go to war. He justified that on false pretences and he took Britain to war without legal justification in international law.

What does all that make Blair?

Blair’s hopes for EU Presidency fade

The fact that Blair’s hopes of assuming the role of European President are fast fading is wonderful news.

Despite Blair’s love affair with the rich and powerful and his conversion to Catholicism, the centre-right governments in France and Germany cannot stomach this delusional politician, who would use the office of EU President to promote his own pious ego and sell the Union out at every opportunity to the US.

As Jean Asselborn, Luxembourg's social democrat foreign minister, said: “There is and will remain a link for the next generation between Iraq, Bush and Tony Blair."

Oppose Blair for EU President

In the Guardian (27 October 2009)George Monbiot argued that he is supporting Blair for the EU presidency for tactical reasons.I disagree with him.

I agree completely that Tony Blair should spend the rest of his days in jail for his crimes, but I disagree with supporting his presidency of the EU.

Such Machiavellian strategies always backfire. The campaign to stop a Blair presidency is already part of the indictment against the man; so why is it sensible to abandon that campaign? How many ordinary people would misunderstand what progressive people were doing?

Also the EU does matter. To disregard and subordinate EU politics to a plan to embarrass Blair is wrong. Additionally, there is a fear that the slippery eel that Blair is could re-invent himself in the presidency with the result that public focus on Iraq would recede. Who remembers today that it was Winston Churchill who sent in tanks against striking workers in 1926?

No to Blair as EU President

The last thing the EU needs is a disreputable indidividual like Blair as its first president.

Blair has blood on his hands from wars in which he involved Britain on wholly false grounds. It would also seem that he was complicit in torture and he cares nothing for human rights or civil liberties. He also appears to be delusional, amassing fortunes by prostituting himself to international banks, while preaching his newly-found Catholic moralism.

The man makes honest people sick.

New Labour's Missed Constitutional Opportunities

When New Labour electorally crushed the Tories in 1997, one thing was foreseeable another was not. Not predictable was just how rotten from a progressive perspective Blair’s government would turn out to be: reactionary polices ranged from the Iraq War, privatisation and benefit cuts to the promotion of religious schools. Foreseeable to everybody, however, was that at some point – and it now appears to be 2010 – Labour would lose office.

Progressive political discourse in the eighties and nineties had centred on building an anti-Tory alliance for constitutional reform to bury the re-occurrence of another eighteen years of centralised and reactionary Tory rule on the strength of a minority of votes. The two key progressive reform proposals were proportional representation and decentralisation. With the significant exception of Scottish and Welsh devolution – achieved despite Blair’s personal misgivings – little happened.

Following Labour’s 1997 election victory, the new government set up the Jenkins’ Commission to consider PR for Westminster elections. In the absence of support and direction from the government it dragged on and finally recommended a bizarre PR system, reflecting only a muddled compromise of the divergent opinions of the commission members. Its findings were quietly forgotten. On regional autonomy, John Prescott pressed ahead with an emaciated form of devolution for the micro-region of the north-east. In 2004 a majority of 78 percent of the residents of the area voted against the assembly; the plan was sunk by a coalition of centralisers and those who saw the proposed assembly as little more than a talking shop and an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy. In truth, by the early 2000s all meaningful constitutional reform was over. New Labour in London inaugurated an era of constitutional conservatism.

What then are the consequences? New Labour’s 2008 meltdown means that in two year’s time there will in all probability be yet again a majority Tory government at Westminster. Surely one small thing that Blair and Brown could have achieved was PR? After all, the Welsh and Scottish Parliaments as well as the Greater London Assembly are elected by proportional representation. True, if Labour had introduced PR after the 1997 or 2001 elections, the whole political map would be different, probably with a Labour-led coalition, instead of a majority government, in office today. But so what? It was not as if Blair planned to do anything socialist or left wing! Nearly all of his agenda had the support of the Tories or Liberal Democrats – or often both.

In 2010 Labour will still be the leading party in one English region, the north, defined as Cheshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire and the historic counties up to the Scottish border; in the other English regions, though, Labour will probably achieve second place or worse. The north, consisting mainly of cities and former industrial towns, has about a quarter of England’s population and is its poorest region. Yet unlike Scotland and Wales, the north will have no elected institution to fight for it. Despite the north consistently voting Labour, Blair focused New Labour on the concerns of Middle England, geographically centred in the south and Midlands; northern Labour voters were largely taken for granted and were ignored. Cameron, though, after 2110 will have even less cause to worry about the industrial towns and inner-cities of the north. He wins no seats there, and probably never will.

So déjà vu. Welcome back to the eighties: majority Tory government in London and the non-Tory voting north is left naked. However both these outcomes were easily avoidable: PR to stop a majority Tory government; and decentralisation so as not to leave the Labour voting north uninsulated from a non-Labour government in London. Why was constitutional reform abandoned?

No doubt there are several reasons, but not least among them were the preferences of Tony Blair. Behind Blair’s US-style déclassé persona is a deeply conservative and anti-democratic politician. Having killed democracy inside his own party, he had no taste for injecting it into the British constitution. Using Britain’s centralised state he carried out his own brand conservatism (called New Labour), and when that had run its course he was happy to hand the UK back to the Conservative Party.


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Nothing Serious To the Left of the British Labour Party

As New Labour abandons social democracy, no serious force to the Left has emerged.

The last thirteen years of Blair and New Labour have seen the disappearance from British elections of a social democratic option on ballot papers. One issue for discussion is why Blair has been able to divorce the Labour Party so fully from social democracy (i.e. policies centring on redistribution and welfare universalism). The other – my concern today - is to focus on Labour’s challenge from the Left.

Three attempts at setting up left parties have been made since the 1990s: Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party (1996), Tommy Sheridan’s Scottish Socialist Party (1998) and George Galloway’s Respect (2004). Each one was set up by a charismatic and dominant leader, garnered a small devoted following, but soon fell to sectarianism leading to decline or implosion.

The two English left parties have been the least successful. Scargill’s party, based on authoritarian nostalgia, soon fizzled out into nothing. Respect retains a minor role thanks to its embedding in the Islamic community and support from the enduring SWP. The first-past-the-post electoral system (with the exception of elections for the Greater London Authority) has also hampered electoral prospects.

Scotland in 2003, though, was different. The SSP in the Scottish Assembly elections enjoyed a PR system that awarded seats to parties with approximately 5-6 percent of the votes. The SSP won six seats in five of the eight electoral regions. A start had been made. Yet within a few years the party had managed to split over a libel action about Sheridan participating in sex parties. In 2007 the Scottish electorate showed its contempt by wiping out the party from the assembly.

Setting up a new party is not easy even with PR. Convincing people that you are serious, and winning their trust, is hard. A successful party would need intelligent broad-minded socialists who can set up street stalls, campaign around local issues and get elected to local councils. Sadly in Britain the gap between New Labour and sectarian cultism has not been filled.