Jony Blair's policies of war, privatisasation" may have reduced New Labour to its smallest share of the vote in a national election since 19l1, but will the body-blows suffered by his party force a rethink of the New Labour project?
Blair himself appears adamant that no change of direction is required. Responding to the "super Thursday" elections on June 10 which saw just 10 per cent of the electorate turn out to vote for his party.- resulting in the loss of another 450 councillors and 6 MEPs - he ludicrously declared that "No politician can afford to be deaf to the voice of the electorate."
But he went on to commit himself to forging ahead "further and faster" with precisely the same package of policies that have divided, demoralised and antagonised New Labour's core support.
It is clear that he has weighed up the extent to which the Tories also lost ground and the Lib Dems more or less stood still, and calculated that he can safely ignore the outcome on June I0.
Blair has also ignored the fact that polls show a massive 60% of the electorate want him to step down before the next General Election, and polls which show the party would stand a better chance of securing a third term with Gordon Brown in charge. It is widely accepted that Ken Livingstone's campaign for re-election as London's mayor was seriously impeded by his decision to rejoin Blair's party. Strat one of the key arguments o wretched is Blair's standing among
that one of the key arguments brought forward by the Fire Brigade Union's assistant General Secretary as he struggled to prevent the union breaking its 86-year affiliation to the Labour Party was that the "small coterie" around Blair were in decline, and "It must surely only be a matter of time before Tony Blair walks into the sunset".
Even UNISON's servile general secretary Dave Prentis, commenting on the FBU decision, admitted: "I can understand their feelings of bitterness over the way they have been treated."
None of this has been enough to persuade Blair that far from being New Labour's main electoral asset, he and his policies are now a It seems that Blair's latest "big idea" is to focus on "personalised" public services, an idea tailored to appeal to the well-heeled and mouthy middle classes, liability.
Far from making amends on issues where he is out of step with the electorate, he is compounding the felony. Within days of the EU election Blair was signing up for the marginally amended European Union Constitution, which carries little visible public support wnile ne nastened to assure British employers that this would not mean any relaxation of what he has proudly described as the toughest anti-union laws in the Western world).
The commitment to hold a referendum on the EU Constitution before 2006 lumbers Blair with an uphill fight to sell a complex and flawed policy document to an obviously sceptical and hostile electorate, in the teeth of largely hostile press coverage - or face a damaging rebuff.
He has also agreed to dispatch a further 3,000 troops to prop up the US occupation forces in Iraq
The Iraq policy, compounded with Blair's adamant refusal to apologise or back down on his claims that the war was justified by Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction", and by the fall-out from the torture and humiliation of prisoners conducted by coalition troops in Iraq, seems destined to remain a millstone around the neck of Blair and New Labour at least until the likely date of the next General Election.
Even the Financial Times leader column (May 15) has pointed to the fundamental problem Blair now represents for New Labour, now he has "yoked himself to George W Bush, US president, and to the hopelessly inadequate US plan for reconstructing Iraq."
The problem is even greater because New Labour has few domestic policies that can attract back its core support. Its consistent line of seeking alliances with the employers and lining up with them against trade unions has lost them the FBU affiliation, while the refusal to allow unions to exercise democratic control over their political funds led to the expulsion of the rail union RMT, one of the Labour party's founder
And while spending on health and education has gone up in real terms, Ministers in these departments have managed to spend it in such a way as to antagonise tens of thousands of front-line public sector workers, and deliver relatively little in the way of visible progress.
New Labour's obsession with drawing in the private sector as managers, providers and (through the Private Finance Initiative) capital financiers of public services are channelling billions each year of taxpayers' money into the coffers of private companies - at the expense of long-term investment in public services.
Meanwhile New Labour's refusal to take on the responsibility of renationalising and planning the transport system has resulted in a continual series of embarrassing failures to improve services, while profits pile up for the shareholders of private operators.
It seems that Blair's latest "big idea" is to focus on "personalised" public services, an idea tailored to appeal to the well-heeled and mouthy middle classes, but which does nothing to address the poor provision of health, education and other services in the poorest areas.
To make matters worse, it has much in common with Michael Howard's latest retread of Tory policy, which also seeks ways of maximising the size and involvement of the private sector, even where the taxpayer foots the bill.
Blair's blinkered refusal to contemplate any serious shift of line piles on the embarNO RAISING OF WOMENS RETIREMENT AGE PENSIONS FOR ALL AT Blair is certainly not listening to pensioners rassment for all those attempting to argue that now is a positive time for the remaining beleagured socialists to reclaim the Labour Party".
As New Labour is driven "further and faster" down the road that has already lost it almost 40% of the 400,000 members it had in 1997, union leaders have been frantically lobbying behind the scenes, desperate for some scrap of a concession to be offered that would justify continuing their support for Blair's party.
A month before the June 10 debacle, leaders of the "big four" unions (Amicus, UNISON, T&G and GMB) convened a secretive meeting open only to general secretaries and one additional representative from each union, to debate a programme of demands -focused on public services, pensions, employment rights and manufacturing jobs -which the unions would collectively press to be included in the next New Labour Manifesto.
On the opening list were the scrapping of PFI and private sector contracts in health and education, and a big increase in counci house building: but the exercise is a hollow one, because Blair has shown not the slightest hint that he may embrace any of them.
Why should he, when he already knows that these same leaders will continue to rally round his party regardless of what policies it adopts?
The clearest example of this is UNISON, which has been at the forefront of campaigns against Foundation Hospitals, PFl and private sector providers. Yet the stall for its Positively Public campaign at this year's Health Conference in Glasgow in April boasted huge posters declaring that UNISON was "Working for a third Labour term" - in which we already know these same policies will be pressed even further.
Far from switching tack, Blair will continue to exploit the chronic political weakness of unions like UNISON, whose Affiliated Political Fund, far from being the voice of UNISON in New Labour, is nothing more than the New Labour machinery that steers the union.
And while some union leaders might see Gordon Brown as a less unpalatable alternative to Blair, it is clear that a switch of figurehead at the top would repackage rather than fundamentally rebuild the New Labour project.
While the loss of the RMT and FU suggests that the New Labour bandwagon is shedding wheels at an alarming rate, it would take a far more determined political stand than any taken so far by the curiously weak "awkward squad" to slam on the brakes
Union leaders are already warning their members that if the unions withdraw their funding from New Labour they would be playing into the hands of the right wing "modernisers" who would seek funding from big business instead.
This is the rationale which dooms to defeat any serious attempt to "Reclaim Labour": it says that unions must not use the most powerful levers they have to press their political agenda, and that win or lose on their demands they have no choice but to pay up, regardless.
The emergence of RESPECT as a left challenge to New Labour, and the fact that it has begun to win a few significant affiliations and much wider support from trade unions, notably from branches and regional bodies of the RMT, FBU and WU, begins to offer a genuine alternative to the defeatist scenaric of petitioning Blair for new policies.
The New Labour project cannot be halted purely by action within the Labour Party Blair's party reorganisation has already seen to that. Even where policies such as PFl and Foundation Hospitals have been rejected by conference they have been forced througt by arrogant ministers and nodding Blairite donkeys in the Commons
The only way to defeat New Labour is to build a genuine alternative. That fight has just begun
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8 soclalst resistance Summer 2004