The Great Moving Nowhere Show (Hall, 1998)

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The Great Moving

Nowhere ShowTony Blair has talked much about 'the project'.But what precisely is it? Stripped of the hyperbole,

the continuities with Thatcherism are all too obvious.Stuart Hall examines a great missed opportunity

What is the political character of the Blair regime? IsNew Labour a radicallynew response to the core

political issues of our time? Is its perspective as broad in sweep, modern in outlook and coherent as Thatcherism's neo-liberalproject, only different - because it is breaking decisively with the legacy and logic of the Thatcher years? Or is it a series of pragmatic adjustments and adaptive moves toessentially Thatcherite terrain? Since taking office, New Labour has certainly beenhyperactive, setting policy reviews in placehere, legislating and innovating there. Acareful audit of the achievements and failures of these early years remains to bemade. But that is for a different occasion.Here, we want to stay with "the big picture'.

Where is New Labour really going? DoesMr Blair have a political project?

Thatcherism, from which Mr Blair haslearned so much, certainly did have a pro

ject. Its aim was to transform the politicallandscape, irrevocably: to make us think inand speak its language as if there were noother. It had a strategy - an idea of where itwanted to get to and how to get there. MrsThatcher had no fondness for intellectuals:the word 'ideas' did not trip lightly off hertongue. Nevertheless, everything she didwas animated by a social 'philosophy'.From a reductive reading of Adam Smith,she learned to see individuals as exclusively economic agents. From Hayek, shelearned that the social good is impossible todefine and that to try to harness markets tosocial objectives led down a one-way slippery slope to the nanny state, misguidedsocial engineering, welfare dependence andmoral degeneration - 'There is No SuchThing As Societv'. From the Monetaristsshe learned market fundamentalism: markets are 'good' and work mysteriously tothe benefit of all; they are self-institutingand self-regulating entities; market rationality is the only valid mode of social calculation, 'market forces must prevail!'

What is more, she armed herself with adecisive analysis of the points of historicalchange which had created the opening toThatcherism. But she did not, like someversions of the 'Third Way', simply project

the sociological trends on to the politicalscreen. She never supposed Thatcherite sub

jects were already out there, fully formed,requiring only to be focus-grouped intoposition. Instead, she set out to producenew political subjects - EntrepreneurialMan - out of the mix of altruism and competitiveness of which ordinary mortals arecomposed. Above all she knew that, toachieve radical change, politics must beconducted like a war of position betweenadversaries. She clearly identified her enemies, remorselessly dividing the politicalfield: Wets v Drys. Us v Them, those whoare 'with us' v 'the enemy within'.

When Marxism Today first began to discuss Thalcherism as a 'project', smarl-arsed

journalists and Labour analysts joinedforces to pour scorn on the idea - a thought

altogether too concerted and 'continental'for the empiricist temper of British politicalculture. Geoff Mulgan - Director of Demos, former MT contributor and now inthe Number 10 Policy Unit - advances asimilar view elsewhere in this issue. 'Mela-political' questions, he says, are irrelevant -a sign that the left intellectuals who ask them are hopelessly isolated from the 'real'business of government. They would bebetter employed, like Demos, thinking upconcrete proposals which New Labourcould put into effect.

Guilty British academics on the left areparticularly vulnerable to this kind of gross

anti-intellectualism. However, Mulgan'sposition seems disingenuous. Of course,policy innovation is essential to any political strategy - that is why Martin Jacquesdreamed up the idea of Demos in the firstplace. There is lots of room for lateralthinking. But - Mr Blair's RendezvousWith Destiny notwithstanding- May 1997was not the start of 'Year Zero'. All questions of perspective and strategy have notbeen 'solved'. As Decca Aitkenhead put itrecently, the Blairites sometimes behave asif 'Number 10 is sorted for nuts and bolts;it's just not sure what sort of machine theyadd up to". In fact, it's impossible to knowhow radical and innovative a concrete pro

posal is until you know which strategy it isattempting to put in place and the criteriaagainst which its 'radicalism' is being

assessed. Without a strategic framework,the 'concrete proposals' could be brilliant;or they could just be off-the-wall - completely batty. In recent months. Demos hasoffered us plenty of both kinds.

In fact, seen in the context of NewLabour's sustained hype and vauntingambition over the past 18 months, Mulgan's idea that nothing requires seriousattention apart from pragmatic effective

ness is not only wrong but curiously 'off-message' and wholly out of synch with HisMaster's Voice. It was clear from the outsetthat Mr Blair saw himself in the Thatcherite mould and he has worked hard tomodel himself on her style of leadership.And with some success! Recent polls suggest the electorate is impressed with 'whatthey regard as the strong Thatcherite style',though they also seem unsure whether thisis more than 'better gloss, more PR andspin' and, more worryingly, they doubt thatNew Labour 'will make a real differenceand force a clean policy break with the Toryyears' (The Guardian, September 28 1998).

Mr Blair has also modelled his ambitions

to make everything in Britain 'New' onThatchcrism's project of national self-renewal. Consequently, these days, no NewLabour spokesperson opens his/her mouth,nor journalist reports the event, withoutreference to 'the Blair project'. It is NewLabour, not the intellectuals, who put this'meta-political' question on the agenda. Itis Blair who talks of New Labour in apocalyptic terms - 'one of the great, radical,reforming governments of our history', 'tobe nothing less than the model twenty-firstcentury nation, a beacon to the world",'becoming the natural party of government'. ("Natural parties of government' arethose whose ideas lead on all fronts, carrying authority in every domain of life; whosephilosophy of change has become the common sense of the age. In the old days weused to call them 'hegemonic'.) Mr Blair isdefinitely into 'the vision thing'.

ew Labour's latest bid to give'this vision thing' historic credibility and so to capture anddefine 'the big picture' is the

'Third Way'. This comes in several shapesand sizes. There is the intellectual's versionof the 'Third Way' offered by AnthonyGiddens. Mr Blair's most influential intellectual, which sketches out a number of significantly novel sociological shifts whichseem to have major political consequences.Many of these one would be happy to agreewith or to debate further. After all, economic globalisation is a reality and hastransformed the space of operations andthe 'reach' of nation states and nationaleconomies. There is a new individualismabroad, due to the growing social complexity and diversity of modern life, which hasundermined much of the old collectivismand the political programmes it underpinned. Many problems do present newchallenges or assume new forms not wellcovered by the old political ideologies. Wedo need to broker a new relationship

between markets and the public good, theindividual and the community. Thesesociological shifts are part of the great

9 MARXISM TODAY NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1998



historical rupture - the onset of late-late-modernity - which Thatcherism first mastered politically but certainly did not originate or set in motion. This is where Marxism Today's 'New Times' analysis andits call for the reinvention of the left began,all those years ago. So much is indeed

shared territory .ut when we move from theintellectual to New Labour's

(more political and strategicversion of the 'Third Way', we

are less on the terrain of political strategyand more, as Francis Wheen recentlyobserved, in some 'vacant space betweenthe Fourth Dimension and the SecondComing'. The 'Third Way' has been hypedas 'a new kind of polities'. Its central claimis the discovery of a mysterious middlecourse on every question between all theexisting extremes. However, the closer oneexamines this via media, the more it looks,not like a way through the problems, but asoft-headed way around them. It speakswith forked, or at the very least garbled,tongue. It is advanced as a New International Model to which centre-left governments around the world arc even nowrallying. However, when it is not rapturously received, it suddenly becomes, not 'aModel", just a 'work in progress'. Can it beboth heroic and tentative? It cannot makeup its mind whether its aim is to capture'the radical centre' or to modernise 'thecentre-left' (and should not therefore besurprised to find young voters placing itsrepositioning as clearly 'centre-right'!). Itclaims to draw from the repertoires of both

the New Right and Social Democracy-but

'The ThirdWay speaksas if there

are nolonger any

conflictinginterestswhich

cannot bereconciled'

also to have transcended them - to be'beyond Right and Left'. These shifting formulations are not quite what one would calla project with a clear political profile.

In so far as one can make out what it isclaiming, does it offer a correct strategicperspective? The fact - of which the "Third

Way' makes a great deal - that many of thetraditional solutions of the left seem historically exhausted, that its programme needed to be radically overhauled and that thereare new problems which outrun its analyticframework, does not mean that its principles have nothing to offer to the task of political renewal on the left. Welfarereform is only one of many areas wherethere is a continuing debate between twoclearly competing models, drawing on if not identical with, the two great traditionsthat have governed political life: the left-of-centre version, looking for new forms inwhich to promote social solidarity, interdependence and collective social provision

against market inequality and instability;and the neo-liberal, promoting low taxes, acompetitive view of human nature, marketprovision and individualism. Can the'tough decisions' on welfare which NewLabour have been 'taking' for 18 monthsreally be 'beyond Left and Right'? Or isthat a smoke-screen thrown up to evadethe really hard questions of political principle which remain deeply unresolved.

One of the core reasons for the 'ThirdWay's semantic inexactitude - measured bythe promiscuous proliferation of such troubling adverbs as 'between', 'above' and'beyond' - is its efforts to be all-inclusive. It

has no enemies. Everyone can belong. The

'Third Way' speaks as if there are no longerany conflicting interests which cannot bereconciled. It therefore envisages a 'politicswithout adversaries'. This suggests that, bysome miracle of transcendence, the interests represented by, say, the ban on tobacco advertising and 'Formula One', theprivate car lobby and John Prescott's WhitePaper, an ethical foreign policy and the saleof arms to Indonesia, media diversity andthe concentrated drive-to-global-power of Rupert Murdoch's media empire havebeen effortlessly 'harmonised' on a HigherPlane, above politics. Whereas, it needs tobe clearly said that a project to transformand modernise society in a radical direction, which does not disturb any existinginterests and has no enemies, is not a serious political enterprise.

The 'Third Way' is hot on theresponsibilities of individuals,but those of business are passedover with a slippery evasiveness.

'Companies,' Tony Blair argues in hisFabian pamphlet The Third Way, 'willdevise ways to share with their staff the

wealth their know-how creates.' Will they?The 'Third Way' does observe acceleratingsocial inequality but refuses to acknowledge that there might be structural interestspreventing our achieving a more equitabledistribution of wealth and life-chances.As Ross McKibbin recently remarked,although most people 'do believe that society should be based on some notion of fairness', they also believe 'that the rich andpowerful can only be made to acknowledgethis by political action'. The 'Third Way'sdiscourse, however, is disconcertinglydevoid of any sustained reference to power.

Mr Blair is constantly directing us,

instead, to 'values'. But when one asks,'which values?' a rousing but platitudinousvagueness descends. He can be veryeloquent about community, an inclusivesociety, with the strong supporting theweak, and the value of facing challengestogether. The problem arises when thiscommunitarian side of the Blair philosophymeets head-on the equally-authentic, rocklike, modernising, targeting, moralisingstreak in 'Blairism'. In practice it is difficultfervently to believe in 'the politics of community' and at the same time to holdunshakably to the view that the task of government is 'to help individuals to helpthemselves', especially when the ways of

implementing each so often point in diametrically opposed directions. Besides, as atimely Guardian editorial observed: 'Whatdistinguishes governments of the centre-left is not their values ... but their perennial dissatisfaction with what markets -necessary as they are - produce.'' It therefore seems most unlikely that the

shifting indecisions and ambiguous formulations of the 'Third Way" offer us clearguidelines for assessing the underlyingthrust of the Blair political project. For ananswer to our original question, we willneed to look at the Blair performance overall, sifting the strong tendencies from theebb and flow of everyday governance.

Blair: 'The reason we have been out of power for fifteen years is simple - that society changed

10 MARXISM TODAY NOVEMBER/DKCEMBER 1998



ing to disinter from its practice itsderlying political logic, philosophy andategic direction.n the global context. New Labour has

ought a sweeping interpretation of globsation, which it regards as the single mostportant factor which has transformedr world, setting an impassable thresholdween New Labour and Old, now and

erything that went before. This is crucialcause, in our view, it is its commitment toertain definition of globalisation which

ovides the outer horizon as well as thebious legitimacy to Mr Blair's wholeitical project.

New Labour understands globalisationvery simplistic terms - as a single, uncon-dictory. uni-dircctional phenomenon,hibiting the same features and producing

same inevitable outcomes everywhere.spite Giddens's str ictures. New Laboures deal with globalisation as if it is a self-ulating and implacable Force of Nature.reats the global economy as being, in

ect, like the weather. In his speech to thebour Party conference. Mr Blair por

yed the global economy as moving sot, its financial flows so gigantic and soedy, the pace at which it has plunged a

rd of the world economy into crisis soid, that its operations are now effectivebeyond the control of nation states andbably of regional and internationalncies as well. He calls this, with a wearyality, 'the way of the world". Hisponse is to 'manage change'. But itms that what he really means is that west 'manage ourselves to adapt to

anges which we cannot otherwise conl' - a similar sounding but substantivelyy different kettle of fish.

This accounts for the passivity of the Blair government, despite itspivotal role in Europe and leading position in the G7 etc, in the

e of the current crisis in Asia, Russia andewhere. It continued until very late toterate the false reassurances that theian crisis would have little noticeableect on Britain. It has shown a surprisingk of flexibility in the face of mountingdence to the contrary. It seems contentreiterate the mantra: 'The goal of ecomic stability and stable inflation willver be abandoned or modified. Newbour is not for turning,' which sounds

reasinglv like a desperate struggle ton. not the present, but the last war.

t has signally failed to seize the advane of the rapidly changing terms of cro-economic debate to offer early,ective or radical leadership to the interional community, as one country after

other deserts the neo-Iiberal ship andves towards thinking the unthinkable -t the unregulated movement of currenand capital, aided and abetted by de-

restrialised corporate power and newhnology, will, if left to the 'hidden hand'macro-economic forces alone, bring theole edifice crashing to the ground. Hisated proposals for the reform of the

MF are far from radical. Paradoxically, it

'New Labourdeals with

globalisationas if it

is a self-

regulating,implacableForce of

Nature, likethe weather'

is the high priests of global neo-liberalism -Jeffrey Sachs, Paul Krugman and GeorgeSoros - not Blair and Brown, who have ledthe retreat towards regulation.

New Labour appears to have beenseduced by the neo-liberal gospel that 'theglobal market' is an automatic and self-instituting principle, requiring no particularsocial, cultural, political or institutionalframework. It can be 'applied' under anyconditions, anywhere. New Labour therefore seems as bewildered as every neo-liberal hot-gospeller that Japanese bankers

just don't actually behave like Wall Streetbankers, and that if you dump 'the market'into a state-socialist society like Russiawithout transforming its political institutions or its culture - a much slower andmore complex operation - it is likely toproduce, not Adam Smith's natural barter-ers and truckers, but a capitalist mafia. AsAndrew Marr shrewdly observed, 'It's thepolitics, stupid!'

S

ince globalisation is a fact of lifeto which There Is No Alternative, and national governmentscannot hope to regulate or

impose any order on its processes oreffects. New Labour has accordingly largely withdrawn from the active managementof the economy (in the long run, Keynes isdead!'). What it has done, instead, is to setabout vigorously adapting society to theglobal economy's needs, tutoring its citizens to be self-sufficient and self-reliant inorder to compete more successfully in theglobal marketplace. The framing strategyof New Labour's economic repertoireremains essentially the neo-liberal one: thederegulation of markets, the wholesalerefashioning of the public sector by the

New Managerialism, the continued privatisation of public assets, low taxation, breaking the 'inhibitions' to market flexibility,institutionalising the culture of privateprovision and personal risk, and privilegingin its moral discourse the values of self-sufficiency, competitiveness and entrepreneurial dynamism.

Economic Man or as s/he came to becalled, The Enterprising Subject and theSovereign Consumer, have supplanted theidea of the citizen and the public sphere. Asthe government's Annual Report boldlyreminded us: 'People arc not only citizens,they are also customers'. The most signifi

cant breaches in this neo-liberal edificewere the statutory minimum wage and theWorking Time directive - commitmentsNew Labour would have been too abject toabandon. It has, however, set the minimumwage at the lowest politically-negotiablelevel, excluding the sector most at risk tostructural unemployment - young peoplebetween 18 and 21.

Giving the Bank of England its independence may have been a good idea. But onlya touching faith in economic automatismcan explain why this meant restricting itsbrief, effectively, to one dimension of economic policy only - inflation - with, ineffect, only one tool of economic management - interest rates. It suggests that

R e s p o n s e : ' We are not spendingour time saying this is a terrible government. It is a much better government than the one before. It is a government that has done a fairly substantial amount of things and we shall all goon voting for it supposing there is anelection tomorrow. What we are tryingto find out is what it is trying to do inline with the old traditions of the Left.

First, I don't think this government isa single bloc. There are different languages coming out. If you listen to Blairor Brown or Mandelson or Field, youhear different views.

Second I think it is simply not so thatNew Labour carries on with the traditional centre-left. Geoff Mulgan is quitewrong about the great wave of centre-left governments being the same sortof thing and happening in the same sortof way. There is a basic difference. TheBlair idea, and I am talking about Blairnot other people, is of a centre-left

which is between the Democratic Partyin the US and New Labour. He believesthat is the model for the centre-left.But the alternative is New Labour orthe traditional European centre-left,marxist, social-democratic and social-christian. And there is a great differencebetween the two. The American tradition is fundamentally not that of theEuropean social state. It may be that asbetween Republicans and Democrats,the Democrats are, in terms of classcomposition and topographical position, the Left. But they are not thesame as the European tradition. If you

look at the reaction, for instance, fromBlair and others to the election of theLeft in France, and Clinton in the US, itis very different. Whatever it is, NewLabour is not a centre-left governmentin any traditional sense in which we inEurope perceive it and that includesnot only socialists but demo-christians,the whole of the social state which isthe central tradition of the 19th and20th centuries on the continent'

Eric Hobsbawm, Marxism TodaySeminar, 4-6 September 1998

Labour has been quietly seduced by theneo-liberal view that, as far as possible, theeconomy must be treated like a machine,obeying economic 'laws' without humanintervention. In practice, what is gained incredibility by being able to say - 'The Government is not involved! Rising interestrates, an over-valued currency, fallingorder books and rising regional unemployment have nothing to do with us. They areunfortunate 'facts of life' which folks mustsimply put up with. You can't buck globaltrends!" - is lost in terms of strategic control. Whether New Labour acknowledges

sed tO Change With it.' (New Statesman, 15.7.1994)




his or not, its effect is automatically to priritise meeting inflation targets over everying else. The irony is that it is preciselye whole structure of neo-liberal, scientis-c jiggerv-pokery which is rapidly fallingpart. Economies are not machines.hanges in one sector have knock-on con

equences elsewhere. The hedge-fundsquations which have kept the inflatedubble of futures, options and derivatives

markets afloat are liquefying. The infamous monetarist so-called 'natural rate of nemployment', which enabled banks andovernments to calculate the necessarynemployment "costs' for a given level of flation, has fallen into disrepute. Theank of England itself says that 'it cannote directly measured and changes overme'. The Federal Reserve long ago sacriced it on the altar of jobs and growth.

On the domestic front, the policyrepertoire seems at first sightmore diverse, but has tended tofollow the same tendenlial

roove. The main emphasis has beenrown on to the supply side of the equa

on. There have been many commendablecial-democratic interventions. But its keyatchwords - 'Education and Training,raining and Education' - are driven, ine last analysis, less by the commitment topportunities for all in a more egalitarianciety, and more in terms of supplying

exibility to the labour market and re-eduating people to 'get on their bikes' wheneir jobs disappear as a result of some

npredictable glitch in the global market.ew Labour does not and cannot haveuch of an industrial economic policy. Butcan and does expend enormous moral

nergy seeking to change 'the culture' and

oduce new kinds of subjects, kitted outnd defended against the cold winds thatow in from the global marketplace.

To this source also we must trace themoralisation of the work ethic, and thestoration of that discredited and obsceneictorian utilitarian distinction between

he deserving' and 'the undeserving' poor.he New Deal subsidises training and Mrlunkett attacks class sizes and expandsursery places for lone parents willing toek employment - very commendable,

nd about time too. New Labour will not,owever, intervene to ensure that there arebs, though its entire welfare reforms are

veted to work and paid employment.ince it must depend on the private sectorprovide them, it can only morally exhort.ence the paradox of Jack Straw holding

arents exclusively responsible for theirhildrens" misdemeanours while Welfare --Work insists that anyone who can move

nd wants to draw a benefit must leaveeir children, get up off their sick beds,

vercome their disability, come back out of tirement and work. Not since the work

ouse has labour been so fervently andngle-mindedly valorised.

Social inequality, broadly defined, is onef the critical defining issues of national

olitics and a crucial test of the distinctionetween the Blair project and market

'Blair's imageof the citizen

is of thelonely

individual,"set free" of

the state toface the

hazards ofthe globalweatheralone'

fundamentalism. According to Giddens, inhis book The Third Way: 'The gap betweenthe highest paid and the lowest paid workers is greater than it has been for the last 50years' and while 'the majority of workersare better off in real terms than 20 yearsago, the the poorest 10 per cent have seentheir real incomes decline.' This is no aberration. It follows a period of the mostintense 'marketisalion'. It is what marketsdo - the kind of Will Hutton, 40/30/30 society which markets 'naturally' producewhen left to themselves. What's more, thenature of poverty has changed, becomingmore diverse, while its causes have multiplied. The term 'social exclusion' drawsattention to these differences, and underlines the fact that income and economicfactors are by no means the only reason different groups find themselves excludedfrom the mainstream of society. There is,however, considerable evasiveness, both inGiddens's argument and in New Labour'sappropriation of it, around the question of how important the income/economic factorin 'social exclusion' is and what to do about

it. Giddens' bald statement that 'exclusionis not about gradations of inequality' lookslike a sentence in search of a 'not only' thatwent missing.

These issues are at the heart of NewLabour's profound ambiguity and duplicityaround welfare reform. After months of aGreat Debate, and a disastrous and aborted effort to begin to put 'it' into effect, weare still really none the wiser about whatMr Blair really thinks or proposes to doabout welfare. We do not know whether heproposes to transform the welfare state tomeet its broader social purposes moreeffectively, or intends to go down in histo

ry as the politician with the 'courage' towind up the welfare state as the basis of thesocial settlement between the 'haves' andthe 'have-nots' which has kept twentiethcentury capitalist societies relatively stableand free of social violence. 'Reform' is theweasel-word, the floating signifier, whichmasks this gaping absence.

He says welfare is not reaching thosewho are most in need. True: but it does notfollow that 'targeting', as such, is the correct overall strategy. He says Britain, in aglobal economic context, cannot financially sustain it. But he does not make anythingof the fact that the UK is about fifteenth in

the world league table of social securityspending. He treats the present level of wealth distribution as a Natural Law ratherthan a political outcome. He believes welfare is bad for us, corrupting our moralsand inducing us to commit crime. But theactual level of fraud is one of the most contested social statistics, and the Fraud Officesystematically fails to produce the missingmillions. There is as much evidence that thereally poor, of whatever kind, can't livedecently on the level of benefits they areoffered and that many are thereby drivento crime as there is for the proposition thatmillions of people are making a 'lifestylechoice' to live homeless on benefit in perpetuity. He promises the poor not social

justice (that is a bridge too far) but 'socialfairness'. But his actual image of the citizenis of the lonely individual, 'set free' of thestate to face the hazards of the globalweather alone, armed against incalculablerisk, privately insured up to the hilt againstevery eventuality - birth, unemployment,disability, illness, retirement and death -like those lean urban 'survivors' on theirmountain bikes who haunt our streets, their

chocky bar, Evian water-bottle and change-of-trainers in their knapsacks. Man as'poor, bare, fork'd animal', isolated and atbay before the elements.

Mr Blair represents his welfare reformsas a continuation of the spirit of Beveridge,but this is simply not the case. For Beveridge understood that welfare systemsreflect and have profound effects on thewider social framework. He knew that theprinciple of 'social insurance' was not onlyefficient but a way of underwriting citizenship; that 'universalism', despite its costs,was essential to binding the richer sectionsof society into collective forms of welfare.He anticipated Galbraith's argument that

the whole system would be in danger assoon as the rich could willingly excludethemselves from collective provision bybuying themselves out. Why should they goon paying for a service they had ceased touse? This potential 'revolt of the elites' is,of course, the critical political issue in welfare reform. The establishment of a two-tiered system, with the richer sectors buying themselves into private provision, iswhat helps to fix in stone the politicalthreshold against redistribution. It destroysthe public interest in favour of private solutions dictated by wealth inequalities andmust drive what is then left in the residual

'public' sector to the bottom, perpetually incrisis and starved of investment, and propelthose who are left out to the margins.

This 'law' is already manifest ineducation - though New Laboursystematically refuses to confrontit. Buying the children out of pub

lic education and into the selective privatesystem has become a habitual middle-classpastime, which New Labour's own leadershave indulged as lightheartedly as anyother ordinary, unreflective, Thatchcrite,possessive individual. 'Targeting', 'selectivity', and 'means testing', which Mr Blair hassurreptitiously slid into place as his great

'principles of reform', are destined, as surely as night follows day, to deepen alreadyexisting inequalities, to increase marginal-isation and social exclusion, to divide society into two unbridgeable tiers and furtherfragment social integration and reciprocity.

Hence the muffled confusion surrounding the Harriet Harman/Frank Field fiasco.Mr Field bats with the best of New Labourin terms of self-righteous moralism aboutpoverty and the desire to do to peoplethings which are good for their souls. HisMethodist spirit is riveted by the fantasy of the great Demon Fraud and the FecklessWork-shy. But he understood that the principles of contributory social insurance and

'universalism' had to be preserved, howev-

Blair: 'The centre-left may have lost the battle of ideas in the 1980s, but we are winning now. A




modified their forms; that a network of ntary agencies could only be intro

ed if regulated, underpinned andrced by the state. He believed thatfits must provide, not a residual but ant standard of life for those who qual

or them; and that the costs of transitionm one form of delivering these princi

to another had to be borne. These

e the 'unthinkable' thoughts for whichwas dismissed. The debate about howh, in what form, with what effects,efore, remains to be had. Tiered uni-alism. combinations of public/privateributory solutions etc, remain to be

ated. There is work for Demos to do!only after the principles of reform have

n openly and thoroughly debated.

is deeply characteristic of the wholee of the Blair project that Greatates are announced which do not actutake place. Instead of a clear and open

ng-out of the alternatives, we have aive public relations and spinning exer

and policy forums to speak over theds of the much-abused 'experts and critdirect to selectively chosen members of Great British Public. There may be ann invitation to participate, to join theultation. But this openness is effectiveosed by Mr Blair's own already-settledviction that he is Right - what Hugong called 'his unfreighted innocence,e-eyed rationality and untroubled self-ef. When in difficulties, the party faith

about whom he is a less than devotedmirer - are summoned to hear the mese, not to state their views. The Laboury, as an organisation within whiche profound matters of strategy may

'Despite thetalk about

participationone gets the

queasyfeeling NewLabour finds

the rituals ofdemocratic

practicetiresome'

gain, through debate, some broader resonance in terms of the everyday lives andexperiences of ordinary folks, and genuinely be modified or win consent, has beenruthlessly emasculated. A terrifying andobsequious uniformity of view has settledover the political scene, compounded by apowerful centralisation of political authority, with twenty-something Young Turks

beaming out ill-will from ministerial backrooms, the whole caboodle under surveillance from Millbank and cemented in placeby a low-flying authoritarianism.

The Labour benches have, with a fewhonourable exceptions, been the mostbedazzled by the hope of preferment, themost obsequious of all. Critics, welcomedat the front door, are systematicallydiscredited through innuendo and spin-doctored at the back door as being trappedin a time warp, if not actually barking mad.Anyone who does not pass the loyalty testis labelled with the ritual hate-word, 'intellectual', gathered into one indiscriminate

heap - those who called for the reinventionof the Left while Mr Blair was still, metaphorically, in his political cradle lumped inwith Trotskyist wreckers - and the wholeshooting-match branded as 'Old Labour'.'Bring me the head of Roy Hattersley!'

Against a majority of people on the left, Marxism Today argued that bringing theLabour Party into the late twentieth century and transforming many of its traditionalhabits and programmes were necessary, if traumatic, events. But the reduction of theparty to a sound-box is quite another thing.It reveals, to borrow a phrase of MartinKettle's, how far the demotic has tri

umphed over the democratic in the New

Labour project. The attempt to govern byspin (through the management of appearances alone), where you 'gloss' because youcannot make your meaning clear. NewLabour's systematic preference for mediareality over sterner political realities,indeed, the constant hype about 'hardchoices' coupled with the consistent refusalto make them, are all part of the same phenomenon. This is not a superficial 'style' wedon't much like, but something that goes to

the heart of the Blair project.Despite all the promising talk about

decentralisation and participation, thecommitment to devolution and constitutional reform - which are significant -onegets the queasy feeling that New Labourincreasingly finds the rituals of democraticpractice tiresome, and in practice if not formally, would be happy to move in thedirection of a more 'direct', plebiscitary,referendum style of governance. The pro ject is consistently more 'populist' than'popular'. This is not the populism of MrsThatcher's neo-liberal Right but it is a variant species of 'authoritarian populism'none the less - corporate and managerialistin its 'downward' leadership style and itsmoralising attitude to those to whom goodis being done. It 's also deeply manipulativein the way it represents the authority itimposes as somehow 'empowering us' -another triumph for 'customer services'.

The same can be said of NewLabour's sense of agency - of who exactly are the political sub

jects in whose image the BlairRevolution is made. Many of us respondedto his election as leader of the Labour Partywith the same optimism we greeted thenomination of Bill Clinton. Not because weagreed with everything he believed, or

properly knew what it was he did believe,but because he was of the generation whohad lived through the Thatcher-Reaganera, through the 1960s and the social andcultural revolutions of our time. We hopedhe would respond - however much wemight disagree in detail - with sensibilitiesinformed by these late-modern experiences. How wrong we were. The Blairsocial project is 'modernising' but modernonly to a very limited extent.

His key social constituency in the run upto the election was 'Middle England' - aprofoundly traditionalist and backward-looking cultural investment. His discourse

on the family, social values and diversityremains deeply conventional. Middle England commands some votes. But as a characterisation of New Labour's politicalsubject, it is the repository of English traditionalism, irredeemably small 'c' conservative. As Jonathan Freedland recentlyreminded us. Middle England is a place of the mind, an imagined community', alwayslocated somewhere south or in the centreof the country, never north - though MrMandelson has recently put in a claim forHartlepool Man. Middle England ispeopled by skilled, clerical or supervisorygrade home-owners, never manual workersor public sector professionals. It is commit-

won a bigger battle today: the battle of values.' (Blackpool, 29.9.1998)




'Historicopportunities

don't last

forever.

And theydon't keep

coming back,offering you

a secondchance'

ledly suburban, anti-city, family-centred,devoted to self-reliance and respectability.Its cultural icons, he argues, are 'Neighbourhood Watch, Gordon's Gin, Enid Bly-ton. Ford Mondeo, Hyacinth Bucket, The

Antiques Roadshow. Nescafe Gold Blend.Acacia Avenue, Scouts and Brownies,Nigel Kennedy and the Salvation Army.'Its voice is the Daily Mail.

S

ince the election, wc have heardless of 'Middle England' and

more of 'The People'. This is thegreat body of unknowns, the

Essex Lads, the 'Babes', homines el fillesmoyen sensuelles. 'The People', JonathanFreedland argues, arc the imagined subjectof phrases like the 'People's priorities', theLottery as the "People's money', the 'People's Princess'. The People are definitelynot the 'working classes' or the 'underclasses' or the 'chattering classes' or manual workers or lone parents or black families or trade unionists or public sectorworkers, or Labour Party rank-and-filemembers, come to that. Their desires mustbe flattered: 'wooed' rather than 'represented". They are spoken to rather thanspeaking. When not watching GMTV orSky Sport, they arc to be found in focusgroups. The People, Nick Sparrowremarks, 'are those who matter once everyfive years '. Their voice is The Sun.

Then there are The Businessmen. Thelonger New Labour governs, the more itcosies up to Business, reinventing itself infull-dress corporate disguise. Mr Blair isconstantly to be seen in their company.Visually, he is exclusively associated withSuccess, a dedicated follower of celebrity,which is the modern form of the successstory. He looks decidedly uncomfortable inthe company of the poor. No doubt a

Labour government needs support fromthe business community. But New Labour'srelentless wooing of the new business nou-veaux riches is nothing short of abject.Businessmen can do no wrong. Their logoadorns every Labour Party conference delegate's name-tag ('Serving the communitynationwide' - courtesy of Somerfield supermarket). Their ads will soon be beamedinto every classroom that is wired up to theNational Grid for Learning. Their expertiseis required on every public, regulatory oradvisory body. They are the 'wealthcreators', whose salaries are beyond control, dictated by some extraterrcstriallydefined 'rate for the job': the big spenders,the off-shore investing 'patriots', theMercedes-Benz and Don Giovanni crowd,with a finger in every share-option deal anda luxury pad in every global city. The factthat, comparatively speaking, they are setfair to also being the most poorly educated,philistine. anti-intellectual, short-termistand venal 'business class' in the westernworld does not seem to matter.

In an ill-advised attempt to appropriatethe spirit of the new British cultural revival,there was, briefly, 'Cool Britannia'. But itwas short-lived. The energy levels hereproved too high, the swing too wild andunmanageable, the rhythms too loud, thefashion too see-through, the culture too'multi-cultural', too full of clever creative

folk, too subversive, too 'Black British' or'Asian cross-over' or 'British hybrid' forNew Labour's more sober, corporate-man-agerialist English style.This was definitively not the 'modernity' towards whichBritain required to be 'modernised".

Finally, in recent weeks, an "enemy' hassurfaced on New Labour's social stage.These are 'the intellectuals' or. as Mr Blaircharmingly characterised them, the 'chattering classes'. Recently, he declared him

self to have been 'never a partaker of thechattering classes'. Critics and whingers tothe backbone, this lot 'pocket everythingthat they do like and then moan about the10 things they don't like'. He clearly foundit difficult to keep the tone of exasperationout of his voice. The 'sneer squad', as hedubbed them, occupy the forbidden zone of Radio 4, The Guardian, The Observer.

Newsnight, Channel 4 News. They are outside the circle of influence, 'below theradar'. There is little doubt that the readersof Marxism Today belong firmly to thelower circles of this encampment.

It will inevitably be said that this account

has been unfairly selective. What about allthe good things New Labour has set in train

- the peace deal in Northern Ireland,incorporating Human Rights into Britishlegislation, the minimum wage, family taxcredit, expanding nursery places, the schooland hospital building programme, breakingthe tide of Euro-scepticism, the movetowards devolution, constitutional reform?Of course, these initiatives are welcome.They add up to a substantial claim on oursupport. There are many others whichpoint in the right direction, which weshould support, though their implementation may be controversial. These includesome of the proposals for urban renewal,

the efforts to reach through to some of thedeep, underlying causes of social exclusionin communities, and the general commitment to improve standards in education -though whether letting Chris Woodhead,Thatcherism's chief Enforcer, loose tobrow-beat schools and abuse teachers is thebest approach to the latter objective onebegs leave to doubt.

The momentous landslide victoryof May 1997 was indeed an historic opportunity, inviting NewLabour to the difficult task of

facing up to the complexities of historicalchange and. at the same time, offering an

alternative political strategy, different fromand breaking decisively with the neo-liberalproject which was, internationally, the first

- but cannot be The Only - politicalresponse to the crisis of 'New Times'.Historic opportunities, however, don't lastforever. And they don't keep coming back,offering you a second chance. So in answering the big questions about the Blair pro

ject, one has had to be ruthlessly selectiveand go for the strategic choices, trying toidentify the persistent tendencies: whatseems to be the underlying framework of assumptions, the shaping 'philosophy'.

The picture is ambiguous. There are stillcounter-arguments to hear. New Labourremains in some ways an enigma, and MrBlair, either despite of or because of his

ceaseless efforts to talk a project into place,paradoxically appears both 'bold' and 'vacillating". But having held one's breath andcrossed one's fingers, it is necessary tospeak it as it looks. New Labour, faced witha near-impossible historic task, has not fullyconfronted its challenge. Instead, it hasbeen looking for easy - 'Third' - ways out,craftily triangulating all the troubling questions, trying to finesse the difficulties. Itmay therefore turn out to be a half-way

decent Labour government, one which onewould have been grateful to have in 'normal' circumstances. The times - and thetask - however, are exceptional. And thehigher the spin doctors pump up the balloon, the more firmly one becomes awarehow much of it is hot air.

What wc knew after Thatcher was that the New Rightcould respond to thenew historical conditions,

though the results of its attempt to do sowere an unmitigated disaster. But could theLeft? The Left was certainly not in goodshape when New Labour took office.

However, the fact is that Mr Blair doesnot seem to have any deep political roots inits hopes and traditions. He is in someways a modern man, at ease with someof the changes which now characteriseour world. But, politically, he is essentiallya post-Thatcherite figure, in the sensethat the experience of Thatcherismwas, it seems, his shaping and formativepolitical experience.

So, try as he may to find an alternativeground on which to stand, he finds theimperatives of a soft Christian humanismmore compelling; its cadences come to himmore naturally than those of the centre-left.He is an able and clever politician and has

become a clever, even to some a charismatic, leader. Just now he is basking in thepower a landslide majority has conferredon him. And, far from betraying his principles, he seems totally and honestly persuaded that what he is doing is right. Hehas and will continue to make many important adjustments to the legacy he inherited.There is also a genuine humanity whichone would have been unwise to put anymoney on in Mrs Thatcher. They are similar figures, but they are not the same.

However, the difficult truth seems to bethat the Blair project, in its overall analysisand key assumptions, is still essentially

framed by and moving on terrain definedby Thatcherism. Mrs Thatcher had a pro

ject. Blair's historic project is adjusting Usto It. That touches half- the modernisingpart - of the task, as Marxism Todayargued it.

But the other, more difficult, half- thatof the Left reinventing a genuinely modernresponse to the crisis of our times - hasbeen largely abandoned. At the global anddomestic levels, the broad parameters of the 'turn' which Thatcherism made havenot been radically modified or reversed.The project of renewal thus remains rough-ly where it did when Marxism Today published its final issue. Mr Blair seems to have

learned some of the words. But. sadly, hehas forgotten the music.•

14 MARXISM TODAY NOVEMBHR/DECFMBER 1998

The Great Moving Nowhere Show (Hall, 1998)

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