In the tenth anniversary year of the 1997 Election, it is high time to get over Tony Blair. He has only ever been the central character in an Ealing comedy about a thick but personable minor toff. Our hero is wandering aimlessly on the fringes of London "society" when he unexpectedly falls for the left-wing girl at work.
In order to impress her, he gets involved in the Labour Party. Then, over 20 years, a series of accidents makes him Prime Minister. However, his political interests do not develop in any way at all, not even during the further 10 years of his Premiership. Hilarious yet poignant stuff from the golden age of British cinema.
To be serious, after the death of John Smith, those who seized control of the Labour Party erased the fact that the combined Labour and SDP votes had been larger than the Conservative vote both in 1983 and in 1987. Such people still deny outright that the opinion poll rating that was the 1997 result had not varied since Golden Wednesday, 16th September 1992. There were swings of 1997 proportions in the European Elections just after John Smith’s death, i.e., under the leadership of Margaret Beckett.
But do not try and tell that to these people, who include David Cameron and those around him. Several of them, including Cameron himself, even manage to hold degrees in Politics while knowing little, and caring absolutely nothing, about it. So, instead of the verifiable facts above, they would have us believe that the 1997 "victory" was all the work of their own archetype of those who did best, ostensibly, out of both the 1960s and the 1980s.
They are also insistent that General Elections are won and lost in the South East. The South East is the least conservative part of the country. And it is therefore the part with the highest level of support for the post-Thatcher Conservative Party. If General Elections really were won and lost there, then there would currently be a Conservative Government with a large majority. In fact, in the days when that party used to win Elections, it did so by winning considerable numbers of seats in Scotland, Wales, the North and the Midlands. These are all much more conservative places than the South East.
By losing first many and then most of those seats, the Conservative Party first nearly and then actually lost power in 1992 and 1997 respectively. In 1992, only the most obsessive political anorak had ever even heard of Tony Blair. And that was still the case on Golden Wednesday, when the Conservative defeat, and thus the Labour "victory" by default, became a done deal.
Furthermore, the Conservatives’ failure to regain power has consisted precisely in its failure to regain those Scottish, Welsh, Northern and Midland seats. By contrast, the Labour gains in the South East in 1997 were just a bonus, and the loss of most of them in 2005 has made no real difference. Indeed, only in 2005 did Blair finally influence a General Election result in any way whatever. Specifically, he lost Labour one hundred seats that any other Labour Leader would have saved. Thus he moved from being a mere irrelevance to being a positive liability.
However, the Conservatives, deprived of any significant parliamentary link with the areas that really matter electorally, entirely failed to register this. Instead, they installed as Leader a Blair clone, because he played well in the South East, and in polls with the 34% of determined non-voters dishonestly factored out.
What do those 34%, and the thoroughly disgruntled Conservative and Labour core voters who remain (for now) actually believe? They believe in national self-government, the only basis for international co-operation, and including the United Kingdom as greater than the sum of its parts. They believe in local variation, historical consciousness, and family life. They believe in agriculture, manufacturing, and small business. They believe in close-knit communities, law and order, and civil liberties. They believe in academic standards, all forms of art, and mass political participation within a constitutional framework. In short, they are conservative.
Therefore, they cannot be in favour of "free" market capitalism, which corrodes to nought all these good things and more. Rather, they see the need for the universal Welfare State (including farm subsidies), and for the strong statutory and other (including trade union) protection of workers, consumers, communities and the environment, the former paid for by progressive taxation, the whole underwritten by full employment, and all these good things delivered by the partnership between a strong Parliament and strong local government. In a word, Socialism.
Since they rightly oppose the unregulated movement of labour, they rightly also oppose the unregulated movement of goods, services and capital. And vice versa. Since they rightly oppose the decadent social libertinism deriving from the 1960s, they rightly also oppose its logically inevitable, and not unwitting, development into the decadent economic libertinism deriving from the 1980s. And vice versa.
And since they rightly oppose the erosion of self-government and cultural distinctiveness by the European Union, they rightly also oppose that erosion by American hegemony and global capital, closely connected as all these three are. And vice versa.
Socialism is the only means of defending the conservative values against capitalism. After all, what other means are there? Correspondingly, those values provide the only grounds for needing or wanting those Socialist means. After all, what other grounds are there? If you have conservative values, then you can only want Socialism, even if you will not yet own the S-Word. Likewise, if you want Socialism, then you can only have conservative values, even if you will not yet own the c-word.
The British electorate at large strongly supports those means and passionately shares those values. A new political party in that vein could take at least a third of the vote, and probably much more. So what are you waiting for? But first of all, we all need to get over Tony Blair.
Tuesday, 2 January 2007
Sunday, 31 December 2006
The Empire Strikes Back
I cannot put this better than does Neil Clark (http://neilclark66.blogspot.com):
Saddam Hussein, the former President of Iraq, was hanged today at 3am GMT. The news comes as no surprise, as Saddam's execution was inevitable from the day he was captured, three years ago. He simply knew far too much to be allowed to live. But even more importantly from the point of view of The Empire, Saddam's death, and that of Slobodan Milosevic earlier this year, is intended as a warning. The message could not be clearer: stand in the way of our plans for global hegemony, and you till will either die at the end of a rope or from an induced heart attack in your prison cell. The message is intended for all those who obstruct the neo-conservative project, particularly the current leadership of Iran and Syria, but also other 'troublesome' leaders who don't toe the line, such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Alexsander Lukashenko in Belarus.
In acting in this way, the U.S. Empire is no different to any others. Throughout history, empire builders, be they Roman, British, Spanish, Ottoman, Russian or German, have shown little mercy to those who had the temerity to stand up to them. The only surprise is that there are those who think Pax Americana is any different.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, on the day that their former leader was executed, here's news of a poll in Iraq which says that 90% of the country's population believe that life was better before the invasion- i.e under Saddam. No wonder they were so desperate to hang him.
Saddam Hussein, the former President of Iraq, was hanged today at 3am GMT. The news comes as no surprise, as Saddam's execution was inevitable from the day he was captured, three years ago. He simply knew far too much to be allowed to live. But even more importantly from the point of view of The Empire, Saddam's death, and that of Slobodan Milosevic earlier this year, is intended as a warning. The message could not be clearer: stand in the way of our plans for global hegemony, and you till will either die at the end of a rope or from an induced heart attack in your prison cell. The message is intended for all those who obstruct the neo-conservative project, particularly the current leadership of Iran and Syria, but also other 'troublesome' leaders who don't toe the line, such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Alexsander Lukashenko in Belarus.
In acting in this way, the U.S. Empire is no different to any others. Throughout history, empire builders, be they Roman, British, Spanish, Ottoman, Russian or German, have shown little mercy to those who had the temerity to stand up to them. The only surprise is that there are those who think Pax Americana is any different.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, on the day that their former leader was executed, here's news of a poll in Iraq which says that 90% of the country's population believe that life was better before the invasion- i.e under Saddam. No wonder they were so desperate to hang him.
Excellent News
The New Year's Honours List announces an OBE for Councillor Alex Watson, the richly deserving Leader of the exemplary Derwentside District Council (exemplary, not least, for the manner of its being run in co-operation between those who emphasise the social-democratic means to conservative ends and those who emphasise the conservative ends necessitating social-democratic means, to the exclusion of sectarian Left entryists associated with the disgraced but shameless David Hodgson, and lately with Kevan Jones MP). Splendid!
Friday, 29 December 2006
Education, Education, Education
The Labour MP and former Aviation Minister, Karen Buck, has withdrawn her 13-year-old son in disgust from one of the Government's "flagship" City Academies (one, moreover, of which her husband is a governor).
Meanwhile, only yesterday, the Government announced that "Gifted and Talented" pupils would be able to buy "e-credits" for extra lessons in such things as Mandarin, and a programme run by NASA. Furthermore, since fully one third of schools have simply ignored the "Gifted and Talented" programme up to now, they are all now to be required to identify for this purpose the top ten per cent of their pupils in academic terms, a total of around 800,000 in the country as a whole.
So how about this for a wheeze? Each primary school's top ten (or, better, twenty or twenty-five) per cent of pupils, thus identified, might be admitted to a whole secondary school for children like them, where such lessons were an integral part of the curriculum, so that there was no need for "e-credits".
Heaven knows what we might call such an institution, but there are two reasons why none such will ever be set up. First, a national network of such schools would put most fee-paying schools out of business within ten years, and a lot of them well before that. And secondly, no such system could operate without powerful Local Education Authorities.
Opponents of fee-paying schools, and supporters of LEAs, think on.
Meanwhile, only yesterday, the Government announced that "Gifted and Talented" pupils would be able to buy "e-credits" for extra lessons in such things as Mandarin, and a programme run by NASA. Furthermore, since fully one third of schools have simply ignored the "Gifted and Talented" programme up to now, they are all now to be required to identify for this purpose the top ten per cent of their pupils in academic terms, a total of around 800,000 in the country as a whole.
So how about this for a wheeze? Each primary school's top ten (or, better, twenty or twenty-five) per cent of pupils, thus identified, might be admitted to a whole secondary school for children like them, where such lessons were an integral part of the curriculum, so that there was no need for "e-credits".
Heaven knows what we might call such an institution, but there are two reasons why none such will ever be set up. First, a national network of such schools would put most fee-paying schools out of business within ten years, and a lot of them well before that. And secondly, no such system could operate without powerful Local Education Authorities.
Opponents of fee-paying schools, and supporters of LEAs, think on.
A free country?
Well, freer than yesterday, anyway. Today, we repaid the final installment of the loans taken out by the Attlee Government just after the War. By 1950 our national debt amounted to 200% of our GDP, compared to 36% today. As the Guardian explains:
In 1945 Britain borrowed $4.34bn from the US consisting of a$3.75bn line of credit and a "lend-lease" loan facility of $586m. The following year the government agreed a $1.185bn line of credit loan from Canada. The money was primarily designed to assist in the post-war reconstruction of Britain's exhausted economy and shattered infrastructure. But the lend-lease loan related to wartime supplies already in transit from the US under President Franklin D Roosevelt's programme of the same name which began in 1941 and which ended abruptly shortly after VJ Day in 1945. Roosevelt famously said the scheme was like lending a neighbour a hosepipe to put out a fire. It marked a significant step away from America's post-first world war isolationism.
Today, the United States and Canada received final payments of $83.25m and $22.7m respectively.
In 1945 Britain borrowed $4.34bn from the US consisting of a$3.75bn line of credit and a "lend-lease" loan facility of $586m. The following year the government agreed a $1.185bn line of credit loan from Canada. The money was primarily designed to assist in the post-war reconstruction of Britain's exhausted economy and shattered infrastructure. But the lend-lease loan related to wartime supplies already in transit from the US under President Franklin D Roosevelt's programme of the same name which began in 1941 and which ended abruptly shortly after VJ Day in 1945. Roosevelt famously said the scheme was like lending a neighbour a hosepipe to put out a fire. It marked a significant step away from America's post-first world war isolationism.
Today, the United States and Canada received final payments of $83.25m and $22.7m respectively.
We are no longer in America's debt.
The Net Tightens
John McTernan, Tony Blair's Political Secretary, was yesterday interviewed under caution over gaps in an email chain relating to cash for peerages.
Thursday, 28 December 2006
Better Hazel Than Hilary
Hazel Blears is campaigning vigorously to save NHS provision (specifically, to save renowned and award-winning maternity services) in her constituency. This is in marked contrast to the record of Someone Else I Could Name, who campaigned vigorously, and only too successfully, to destroy such provision (including just such services) here in her own constituency, even conspiring spitefully with the then Tory Government to that end. To this day, her mini-me refers to that much-missed provision as "a tip" and such like, when not pretty much demanding at Parish Council meetings that the elderly have their Zimmer frames kicked away for his sadistic amusement.
Blears, apparently, is facing deselection, and so is pulling out all the stops. Well, that's called democracy, folks. But just what does Hilary Armstrong have to do, or not do, to face any such threat? The level of sycophancy towards politicians in this part of the country beggars belief, and genuinely baffled one of the leading campaigners to save Shotley Bridge, who put it to me at that time that anywhere else, "The MP would have been dragged in, by the hair if necessary," rather than begged on people's knees to condescend to turn up to public meetings, and even then let off entirely when she failed to do so even so much as once.
Blears, apparently, is facing deselection, and so is pulling out all the stops. Well, that's called democracy, folks. But just what does Hilary Armstrong have to do, or not do, to face any such threat? The level of sycophancy towards politicians in this part of the country beggars belief, and genuinely baffled one of the leading campaigners to save Shotley Bridge, who put it to me at that time that anywhere else, "The MP would have been dragged in, by the hair if necessary," rather than begged on people's knees to condescend to turn up to public meetings, and even then let off entirely when she failed to do so even so much as once.
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