General Election 3 - the visionless vision of New Labour

Here comes the big one. Two days before the election and its time to hear about the Labour Party manifesto.

Here is a link to the full read: http://www.labour.org.uk/manifesto – all 112 pages of it. Below, in about three and half pages, you get all the detail, the comment and, as the process comes to its climax, you get the tortuous process going on in my head.

So, the Labour Party… what to say?

It was born of the British Labour movement, inspired by a German political philosopher, tamed and intellectualised by the Fabians and their ilk, emerged in the first half of the 20th century and then shaken about in the Tory dominated, globally weakening Britain of the second half of the 20th century. Then came New Labour and Tony Blair, and for the first time two consecutive victories for a left-of-centre political party this country has ever had! They, New Labour, Blair, Brown and even the majority of the labour movement that continues to back Labour, are on the cusp of a third term that could justify Blair’s millennial cry that this will be “Britain’s progressive century”.

What a journey these two terms have been. Do I need to remind you?

• Total acceptance of Thatcherite market ethos, deregulation and privatisation
• PPP and PFI pushed to its limit (i.e. into service delivery, not just restrained to overseeing the development of physical capital)
• Union rights only slightly revived
• No repeal of the Criminal Justice Act of 1994 (which killed of raves and gave us saccharine super-clubs), but instead an continuous attack on our civil liberties through a zealous exploitation of the fear of terrorism, an attack on the rights of asylum-seekers and the criminalisation of kids being naughty;
• Fudging over grammar schools, introduction of more tests at all ages, and failure to effectively reform A-levels
• Scraping foundation hospitals through parliament
• Commitment to targets that focus the professionals on the box to tick, not the service
• Centralisation of power into Blair and his mates and Tasmanian Devil like energy in passing legislation and Tasmanian Devil lack of care and forethought in their actions
• Complete cock-up of reform of the House of Lords
• And of course the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the ensuing fallout.

And there’s probably more…

However, there is also the good stuff. And that list is probably longer…

There’s been the introduction of the Human Rights Act and extensive expansion of equality of opportunity legislation, contributing to a more equal, freer and meritocratic society. We’ve seen a double in the NHS investment since 1997… double!!! The usual blurb is true: waiting lists are down, there are more doctors and nurses and they are working fewer hours, hopefully making them better professionals, and happier people.

We have seen the huge increase in education spending. This is my area. Whilst there have been a few blunders – usually because of the desire of Tony to interfere in the work of the Department of Education and Skills, e.g. when he foolishly thought that A-level were worth retaining – there has been some impressive improvements:

• 30% rise in teacher salaries, making teaching a desirable career choice for smartest people in society
• a similar increase in spending per pupil is ensuring that schools are buying the latest equipment (IT, books, environment), employing more teachers and support staff and being able to provide more quality professional development for teachers
• there is the astounding Building Schools for the Future project which is going to see half of all schools in England rebuilt, from scratch, knock ‘em down and start again. And about a third will be fully refurbished.
• there is the ICT in Schools programme, which has seen broadband enter into most schools and a rise in equipment so that there is one computer for every 8 kids. Children have/or will have access to digital cameras, wireless laptops, they learn from digital whiteboards and analyse science experiments using University quality equipment. This is the kind of stuff that costs huge wads of cash.

The Labour government has also quietly met its progressive tendencies. Whilst publicly pandering to the middle classes’ desire for secondary school choice, Labour have invested heavily in poor and inner-city areas, through programmes such as SureStart, Connexions, Excellence in Cities and education action zones. There has been mixed results and the impact has been slower than expected, but working class people are emerging as some of the biggest winners in the system – once again supporting a more equal, freer and meritocratic society. One of the most important things, however, is that in education policy making, a culture has been developed that is committed to evidence rather than ideology, supporting teachers rather than bashing them and a commitment to learning and caring for young people rather than continuous reductive statements about disciplining children and teaching “traditional” methods.

There’s, of course, the small thing about the Economy; rising employment leading to near full employment; the minimum wage; tax credits and targeted support for young families and pensioners and reducing child poverty. Britain, under Blair, has new power on the international stage, this is no doubt controversial. But, I have no qualms about being pleased about the role of Britain has in arguing for the elimination of Europe’s common agricultural policy (CAP), of creating a very anglicised EU constitution and on the Governments focus on Africa and climate change.

I am sure I will have missed many of the pro’s and the con’s of Labour’s record. This process is necessary to break down the new manifesto of 2005. Interestingly, the manifesto, titled “Britain, forward not back” is at its best when talking about their past achievements. I will not go through that again; I have given you my take on their record already.

The vision for the future is, unfortunately, a little disappointing and very boring. Time and again the manifesto misses this opportunity for setting out a bold third term vision by referring to a ‘whole-sale review’ of the issue. Two of the biggest areas of reform are left to these review:

• Reforms of Council Tax will be left to the Lyons Review. No brave stick-your-neck option like the Local Income Tax for Labour. In fact, on taxes, they continue to just offer more of the same, which I’m going to call “intelligent tinkering”. Intelligent, because it raises the state coffers without getting people in a hump; tinkering, because it involves a mix of tax breaks, credits, subsidies and investments for business on the one hand and on the other incremental rises in a range of taxes, most that you’ve never heard. This is a method that means more is spent on collecting tax system compared to if you were to be open about using progressive taxes (like income tax).
• The second cop-out is that the future of pensions is referred to the Pension Committee that will conveniently report in Autumn 2005!

Some of the other big disappointments include:

• There is barely anything on agriculture. Just a whimper – supporting rural post offices and creating new bus routes. Nothing on using regulation to control the power of supermarkets. No vision of the agricultural industry that is often reliant illegal workers, working under the minimum wage. But then this is a Government blinded by their belief in deregulation and free-markets.
• Democracy and the constitution – Labour has been a centralising government, so when there is a chapter entitled “Democracy: Power Devolved…”, it is worth double-checking. And sure enough devolution of power is whimsical, there are commitments like “new powers for parish councils to deal with anti-social behaviour” – woohoo, now that’s what I call democracy! They also make commitments to freeing up local councils from inspections. This is all a far cry from the more visionary boost to British democracy the liberal democrats were offering.

There are a range of commitments worth highlighting, some big, some small, and mostly positive:

• Full employment in every region and nation – let’s not forget that the “modern definition” of full employment being “employment opportunity for all” (p.17)
• Raise minimum wage from £5.05 to £5.35 (about 6% increase, i.e higher than the rate of inflation, but not massively)
• Continuing commitment to PFI to fund the tube, despite evidence of the private sector having a laugh at our expense
• Education – they are committed to give more power to parents, turning all schools into specialist schools, and creating 200 academies. This is tweaking, but on education - as long as Ruth Kelly goes – Labour are strong.
• There is very big idea for education. Labour is committed to give an entitlement to all young people, up to the age of 19, free education. Whilst not as costly, it is as visionary as free education up to the age of 16.
• There’s the usual bumf on crime. I think Camden is safer. The new community support officers (CSOs) were a brilliant idea, particularly for London. Labour introduced the Asbos (anti-social behaviour orders), which I was very hostile to initially, but are being used in Camden to rehabilitate and include rather than criminalise and exclude.
• On asylum issues there is usual mixing of it with immigration, and a “here are the facts, things are better – see less asylum seekers” approach. Fuck that. Labour were not tough enough to face the xenophobes and racists on immigration and asylum and have we have all paid the price. They have proposed a points system for immigration, which if you read the detail will reduce the movement of people from poor countries and increase it from rich. It’s a bit like Britain and the West’s approach to international trade!
• In the NHS it seems there are more promises of tweaking a bit like education. But somehow reading it, just like the education chapter, you know they are looking to build a more robust system that serves people better.
• The Child Trust Fund (CTF) is billed in the manifesto as “the World’s first example of a government ensuring that all children grow up with a financial stake”. This has the potential to be a truly progressive policy – redistribution of money is the sure fire way to equalise society, not good education or good health, but money. That is what the CTF will do. However the CTF is not new, it was launched in January.
• On international policy there is no mention of Iraq. But the Labour party will be reformist of but committed to Europe and have the same approach to the UN, the World Bank and IMF – once again tweaking, whilst trying to be all things to all people. Britain will “lead on” climate change, development for Africa, and fairer trade.

So that’s it. No policies to scare you into voting for the Tories, no major constitutional or tax reform like the Liberals, the Labour is about more of the same as before, just a little bit better – nothing to shock you to much, we don’t want another Iraq after all, but, look, we’ve stabilised the economy, we are moving to a full employment, we are a redistributing government, and we are placing health and education at the heart of British public society… I mean, what I am saying is... what more do you want?

This manifesto is the triumph of managerialist politics; the emphatic stamp of the politician as technocrat rather than ideologue or intellect. Chapter after chapter is incredibly boring – you have to really search for the gold, and there is some as I have indicated above. It is a vision of tweaking Britain into greatness.

The first time I came across this managerial politics was in Kenya, during the run-up to the 2001 election when Moi was finally disposed of. The parties weren’t arguing about ideology, there was no left or right, it was simply a matter of creating the right conditions where IMF and World Bank money would flow in, thereby stabilising local markets and encouraging foreign investment and increasing employment to increase the tax take and support a modicum of social investment. It was easy to understand that this was a shadow of democratic discourse. Kenyan public policy making was, crudely put, subject to American foreign policy and subservient to American, European and Japanese multinationals.

On reading Labour’s manifesto – the same feels true for Britain: free-markets and deregulation have been accepted by both Blair and Brown. Britain, as a very rich country has considerable room for manoeuvre, compared to a country like Kenya, and so can redistribute and invest heavily on health and education. But the Britain that Labour governs over is deeply divided and unequal. The party that emerged from the Labour Movement presides over a society where fewer people from lower classes get access to university places now than in the mid-sixties; a society in which 40 percent of young people, largely from poor socio-economic still fail at GCSE; a society which repays fat-cattery over the odds; a society that raises its borders as its neo-liberal international policies and trigger happy tendencies raise people’s lives to the ground.

When it is all said and done, Labour is a progressive government and will continue to be, Labour will attempt to make society more equal and meritocratic and Labour also has the most complete vision of Britain. However, terms such as “progressive”, “equal” and “meritocratic” are limited and our expectations of these terms reduced in this managerial political climate. Frankly, it is all a little dull.


All the same, here’s to staying up all night to watch the election!