“Gordon did the economics”.
That’s precisely the problem. Tony Blair did not understand economics – excellent junior barrister, and outstanding communication skills and politician. There is indeed a plethora of substantial achievements for which all of us in Labour can be very proud indeed: the Northern Ireland peace process (the Belfast Agreement) and the formation of the Northern Ireland assembly, genuine advancement of LBGT rights, the Millennium Dome project, Scottish and Welsh devolution, the minimum wage. It’s critical also to note that public satisfaction with the National Health Service was at an all-time high, entirely due to the effort Blair put into this. This has always been the bête-noire of Labour, for example the public have been traditionally been somewhat reluctant to ‘thank’ Labour and Blair for this. (There have been theories proposed by Peter Kellner to explain why this might be so, such as voters believing that ‘they were the lucky ones’ and ‘they were bucking the national trend’). And indeed two of the very first things – and massive achievements – were the introduction of the Department for International Development and the Human Rights Act.
I don’t particularly care about what Alastair Campbell and numerous others say about Blair winning three elections – I feel that this is a red herring, and on principle what matters is what political ideologies he put into action. If you’re talking actual facts anyway, Blair’s support started to erode long before the Iraq War, at around 2002. Alastair Campbell’s latest diary reports an extremely dysfunctional Cabinet. Blair and Brown blatantly hated but respected each other, and with each trying to undermine each other but pretending their best to form a sense of unity. What Alastair describes is a pitiful state of affairs. Sure Campbell is a master-strategist in the way that Osborne will never be capable of being. However, what he reports is an organisational culture with two separate Blair and Brown styles, culture and ways of doing things. They fundamentally disagree, but it’s no good saying that Brown “did the economics”. Brown is a Keynesian, and he had the UK on a path to recovery before he was booted out in 2010.
Blair’s economic policy, or business model for UK plc if you prefer, is completely incorrect in my view. It takes no account of behavioural economics. He led members of his government completely down a blind alley of overcommoditisation of everything. His greatest sin was to embark on a strategy of overcommoditisation of the public services, completing spitting in the face of acknowledging value of people. People lie at the heart of the Labour – that’s why we have the Unions. In my personal view only, Blair’s effect on Labour, despite winning three elections, was to set the UK back decades. A donkey could have won the General Election against Major, and Blair failed to capitalise on producing a UK fit-for-purpose. The economy is still unbalanced, the Unions do not feel valued, and we are left with a sick Britain which is extending Blair’s plans albeit in a more extreme way. The Beechcroft Report and NHS Act are exactly what happens if you do not value hard-working people in the public sector.
Gillian Duffy represented an approach to immigration which was pathological. The Fabians’ response has to formulate this in terms of insecurity of voters, elegantly described in ‘Southern Discomfort’. However, I find the whole concept of ‘aspiration’ entirely phoney, and summarises well Blair’s government – a chic marketing exercise in making Labour palatable to the general public. It was extremely cynical, and the public saw through it, forcing Mandelson to declare New Labour clinically dead in 2010.
Ed Miliband needs to embrace behavioural economics and corporate social responsibility – in real terms, this means valuing all people who contribute to the society and economy of the UK. We need to talk about Tony, in that he is not some Messiah that walked the earth. He may have been an election-winning machine, but the fact that he could not integrate an understanding of economics to the heart of government speaks volumes. A generation of people currently at University are keeping up the intellectually-bereft idol worship of Blair, but they are doing Labour a massive disservice. Labour has to be inclusive of everyone, wherever they come from, to move forward. I believe, personally, that the whole of Labour Left and the Fabians have been extremely helpful in this regard.
