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...
Thatcherism and New Labour
Returning for now to ideology in the Marxian sense, Thatcherism can
be seen as an ideology which had significant success in establishing
hegemony in Britain over the 1980s. In 1997, the New Labour government’s
‘third way’ was not an ideological rejection of laissez-faire
(as with Oswald Mosley’s ‘third way’ in the late 1920s and early
1930s! ...
The earlier, pragmatic origins of Labour’s overall transformation had
lain in Labour’s need to be ‘electable’. ...
The social origins of Labour’s transformation lay in the changing
social structure of Britain (in common with other ‘advanced’ Western
countries): the old ‘working-class majority’ had yielded to the ‘twothirds/
one-third’ society where two-thirds of voters (if not the whole
population) saw themselves as comfortably-off or potentially so. ...
The economic origins of Labour’s transformation lay in the fact that
social democracy, let alone socialism, in one country no longer seemed
viable. ... Economic
policy was dominated by the need for countries to sell their labour
force, in a highly competitive international auction. ...
Once the Left of the Labour party, defined as it was from the 1950s to the
early 1980s by its belief in ‘Clause IV socialism’, had given up its belief in
public ownership, it found it lacked an ideology. ...
And once the old Labour Left was free-floating, some of the ‘social
democratic’ wing, what had been seen as the Right of the party in the
days of old Labour (represented by the likes of Roy Hattersley), now
sounded (and was) positively radical by comparison. ... It was
the moderate Left within Old Labour which formed the intellectual
nucleus of New Labour, which in turn was more Right-wing than the
Right in Old Labour. Even some of the harder Left in Old Labour contributed
to New Labour, in an astonishing series of political reincarnations. ... In historical context, New Labour was
in some respects a throwback to the oldest Labour of them all, namely
the MacDonald government after 1931 in its desire to placate financial
markets as the first port of call of policy.
But this atavistic masochism of Labour was not just in pursuit
of ‘sound finance’. New Labour, despite its supply-side tinkering and
budgetary incentives, can legitimately be called laissez-faire in that it
lacks – indeed eschews – a theory of economic planning, except a ‘procompetitive’
bent which it inherited from one strain of the outgoing
Tory government (the neo-liberal strain). ... And
ironically, New Labour is applying ‘pro-competitive’ policies to private
utilities which on both political and economic grounds would be better
established as public services.
In this sense New Labour is a direct descendant of the US Democrats,
with US Democratic ideology once defined as ‘Head Start plus AntiTrust’. ... Similarly, New Labour, having ditched
social democracy (never mind socialism), can pose as the party of
‘fair competition’, which the Tories may do in ideology but which
their record and industrial backers preclude in practice. Even here
New Labour is in difficulties, as its desperation to appeal to the City
precludes even consistent regulation.
The problem for New Labour is that establishing competition as an
alternative to private monopoly does not make sense if the private
monopoly is a natural monopoly, or as near as damn it, which is the
case with most utilities. ... Yet New Labour dare not say this, and so ties itself in
knots seeking to manufacture a competitive situation which is ironical,
costly and inefficient even when it is not untenable. ... Labour has inherited a ‘privatisation too
far’, yet is defining its ‘Third Way’ in this area as tighter regulation of
the inherited structure, not a more appropriate structure.
This kind of problem is directly inherited from the US Democrats –
who in fact are generally more pragmatic on these matters than
New Labour as judged by its early days. Indeed New Labour is in
danger of believing Thatcherite ideology much more than those robust
Thatcherites who knew full well that competition was the smokescreen
through which to justify privatisation, which had fundamentally different
objectives (such as redistribution of wealth and power from poor
to rich, with the latter camp politically augmented by the aspirant rich
through the uses of ideology).
Approximate Word count = 3337
Approximate Pages = 13.3
(250 words per page double spaced)
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