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December 16, 2003
Blairism's existential crisis

Alan Milburn, the former Health Secretary, is becoming chairman of Progress, the Blairite campaign group, in order to keep the flame of Blairism alive after the eventual political demise of Tony Blair. The first interesting thing to note is this intimation of Blair's political mortality from one of his closest supporters. The second is the fundamental loss of confidence and direction by the Blairites themselves which lies behind this. According to Patrick Wintour in the Guardian, Milburn is alarmed by the total eclipse in the US of Bill Clinton's 'third way' and the fact that the Democrats have lurched to the left in the rise of the egregiously absurd Howard Dean, who Milburn believes will therefore be taken to the cleaners by President Bush.

Clearly, Milburn thinks there are ominous parallels for Labour if Gordon Brown were to succeed Blair. But there's more to his concerns than the fear of a lurch back to Old Labour ideology. Key passage:

'He admits that the party has lost its way in its second term, saying he would like to restore the original Blairite coalition, balancing rights and responsibilities. He would like specific new work on welfare reform, including housing and incapacity benefits, as well as more political power handed down to neighbourhood level, an initiative already under way with the regeneration minister, Yvette Cooper'.

The fact is that New Labour has lost its way for very similar reasons to the disappearance of Clinton's 'third way' -- the very idea that lay behind New Labour. This failed to put down roots because it was not a living organism that had any roots to put down. It was, rather, a wholly artificial, cynical piece of political 'triangulation' that avoided making the political choices that needed to be made and instead stitched together incompatible values in a dishonest attempt to pretend to voters that it represented a new political maturity.

What Milburn cannot face up to is the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the left -- a bankruptcy which New Labour, far from escaping, actually embodies. All the interesting ideas and all the serious and impressive thinking are now to be found on the right. That's not to say all their ideas are good, by any means; nor is it to say that the Conservative party is either coherent or principled (it is not). It simply means that the left has nothing any more to say that's worth listening to, because it has lost its raison d'etre. It is an empty shell, mired in adolescent fantasies of world transformation which mean that, having uprooted itself from its own ideological base, it can only trample down and vandalise the institutions and values of the society that spawned it -- and then call that 'progress'.

Posted by melanie at December 16, 2003

Comments

I like Howard Dean! I don't think he's absurd politically at all. And he's been very good for Vermont. However,I do worry that he'll end up another George McGovern. Still, having a Lieberman is no answer. The Democrats cannot find their salvtion in me-tooing the Republicans. And it would be nice to give American voters a meaningful choice next November.

Posted by: Joanne at December 16, 2003 04:24 PM

I think as important as triangulation was to the New Labour victory, fatigue with the Old Conservative government was just as much a factor.

Posted by: Theodopoulos Pherecydes at December 16, 2003 04:55 PM

Labour only ever takes office in Great Britain when the Tories grow tired and fractious.

We need a change of government to stop them getting totalitarian as happened under Thatcher, and under Blair.....what we really need is governments with small working majorities.

The British public is not ideological, but it is driven by circumstance to lease "Thatcherism" or "Blairism" for a time when all it really wants is competent and cost-effective government.....this it rarely sees.

In the words of Will Rogers: "Thank God we don't get all the government we pay for !"

Posted by: Romulus at December 16, 2003 07:00 PM

Romulus,

Well, we have in effect two Labour governments in power at the moment: we have the Blairite ideas in the ascendancy in terms of mixed economy and social justice etc. We have simultaneously a spend-spend-spend old-Labour approach to improving the public services - funded by, yes, of course, old-Labour-style tax rises.

Whereas in the 1970s it was a question of 'spend our way out of recession' (which of course was ultimately counter-productive due to the resulting inflation) we now have a philosophy in low-inflation times of 'public service spending' but without any proper reform: in other words, equally short sighted.

However, given how this government is one of Orwellian slogans, it will of course, completely fail to make the NHS, for example, any more efficient and will no doubt try to facilitate initiatives that contain easy and appealing sound-bites to give the appearance of progress.

Though of course the electorate now see through it....

...The only way that the electorate will see through its infantile attachment to Labour is if there is a very sudden and sharp dip in the housing market (a great British delusional obsession, if ever there was one!) which has a knock-on effect on other sectors of the economy...

It's a pity that there is no reasonable opposition around to appeal to the public and that it will take a real economic jolt for them to start to see through the wasteful emptiness of much of Labour's governance.

Posted by: David at December 16, 2003 07:41 PM

As the libertarian post-socialist descendant of Labour pioneers, I should like to note that the Left-hand-side is not wholly intellectually and morally bankrupt. There are proud traditions of self-help and independence in the Labour Party and tough independent straight-talking folk who worked to fight real wrongs. I note further that the Tories, the bosses, the clerics wanted people ignorant and illiterate or just sufficiently skilled to be more productive wage-slaves and that in this they were the soul-mates of the abominable Clarke and that Labour did not become a mass movement because millions of voters were converted to socialism and the gulf between socialist/Marxist/neo-Marxist/crypto-Marxist politicians and those they wish to vote for them is as wide today as ever (evil grin). Oh and Blair is appalling and a disgrace to t'Labour Party; Labour most emphatically was not founded on tugging forelocks, deference to entrenched power, spin and lies.

Posted by: Ysabel Howard at December 21, 2003 04:37 AM

Terms such as "left" and "right" have become all but meaningless. Since the collapse of the postwar social-democratic consensus and the rise of Thatcherism in the mid to late 70s, we have witnessed the complete hegemony of the political right.

Tony Blair and New Labour are no exception to this. Blairism is a fusion of Thatcherite economics and Political Correctness, or, if you prefer, of economic AND social laissez-faire.

By any realistic criteria there are NO left-of-centre parties in the UK. Our politics has become Americanised, and we now have two right-of-centre parties.

By and large this phenomenon has gone unnoticed by the electorate, who, possessing intellectually uninquiring tribal loyalty, assume that the major parties remain substantially what they were twenty years or so ago. It does not occur to them that one ideology has utterly triumphed (that of extreme free-market consumer capitalism), and that the political parties no longer represent distinct political movements, but merely contrasting management styles.

I would like to know what splendid ideas the political right has to offer us. As for the political left, it barely exists.

The introduction of PR thirty years ago could have prevented the unchallenged rise of ultra-right-wing ideology, and the effective disenfranchisement of millions of voters. Now I fear it is too late.

Posted by: Neil Saunders at December 27, 2003 01:39 AM