LENIN'S TOMB

Wednesday, February 02, 2011

Tony Blair must die again posted by Richard Seymour

Tony Blair has described Hosni Mubarak, the beleaguered Egyptian leader, as "immensely courageous and a force for good" and warned against a rush to elections that could bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power.
The former prime minister, now an envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, praised Mubarak over his role in the negotiations and said the west was right to back him despite his authoritarian regime because he had maintained peace with Israel.
But that view is likely to anger many Egyptians who believe they have had to endure decades of dictatorship because the US put Israel's interests ahead of their freedom.
Speaking to Piers Morgan on CNN, Blair defended his backing for Mubarak.
"Where you stand on him depends on whether you've worked with him from the outside or on the inside. I've worked with him on the Middle East peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians so this is somebody I'm constantly in contact with and working with and on that issue, I have to say, he's been immensely courageous and a force for good," he said.

Labels: british empire, dictatorship, liberal imperialism, middle east, mubarak, revolution, tony blair, US imperialism

Tuesday, February 01, 2011

Genealogy posted by Richard Seymour

"It is important to realise that Chechnya isn't Kosovo". (2000)

"Hosni Mubarak is not Saddam Hussein". (2011)

Two homilies from Rev. Blair on the necessity of hypocrisy, and the evil of moral consistency.

Labels: 'totalitarianism', blair, british empire, genocide, imperialism, iraq, neoconservatism, tony blair, US imperialism, war crimes, war criminal

Friday, October 22, 2010

Remembrances of things past posted by Richard Seymour

Nick Clegg, patronising a member of the public:

"I understand people are very fearful. Fear is a very powerful emotion. It pushes everything aside. I ask people to have a little bit of perspective. We believe... that it is done as fairly as we possibly can, where the richest are genuinely paying the most. We've tried to make sure particularly the elderly and the young are protected. If people can just look at some of the variety of the announcements we've made, rather than respond to a totally understandable anxiety, they'll see the picture is a lot more balanced."

It all sounds so familiar. Where have I heard that condescending, evasive, vapid, aloof, placatory, but at the same time wheedlingly hectoring tone before? (Similar style here). Could it be? Has the antichrist found a new host...?

Labels: austerity, cuts, lib dems, nick clegg, tony blair, tories

Friday, September 03, 2010

New Labour myths again. posted by Richard Seymour

You'll remember this. Dan at The Third Estate points up a passage from the evil one's tractatus illogico-politicus: "Ed Balls was of the opinion that the public wanted even more spending and were prepared for the extra tax, by reference to polls that the Treasury had – which I said was nonsense. On these issues, the public fib." Two things. First of all, there's the trademark cynicism and contempt for "the public"*. Secondly, I am assured by people who were in the Labour Party circa 1992 that the conclusion many senior Labourites drew from the election results was indeed (perversely) that the public only pretends to favour higher taxes for better public services, and that we had become thoroughly Thatcherised during the 1980s. But I don't believe that anyone was really convinced by this.

As I point out in - oh, what's it called, now? - the psephological and polling evidence doesn't support this idea. The New Labour project, if it is to be judged purely on electoral terms - its preferred standard actually - didn't work. It was supposed to produce a new, broad electoral coalition that would anchor British politics to the centre-left for the long-term, and all it has done is reduce Labour's base. Blair's three election victories would have been impossible if it weren't for the sheer, enervated weakness of the opposition. Meanwhile, most voters have always rejected Thatcherism, or tried to when given the chance.

But the line that it was the public who were secret Tories provided a convenient, superficially plausible rationale for pursuing a project that Blair and Brown had already been attracted to by to during their visits to Australia and the United States - the same 'Third Way' idea that Labor and the Democrats were already putting into action. The attraction behind that project was simple: the old social democratic centre was finished, and the social forces to the left of centre were too weak and divided to sustain a more radical alternative. As Kinnock et al watched the big battalions of the working class get hammered by Thatcher, they had already decided that the era of social democratic corporatism was over. No electoral package that was not already approved by at least a fraction of big capital was possible - even if it could win an election, it couldn't be carried through in practise.

The populist rightist insurgency started by Powell in the Sixties and continued by Thatcher in the Seventies proved that it was possible for a right-wing government to work outside the social democratic settlement by espousing a new politics of 'the nation'. The Conservative Party was now not merely the party of growth, or of the efficient management of social democracy. It was the party of a strong Britannia, repelling immigrants, defending the Union with Ulster, asserting British interests overseas, protecting British families, fighting for a stable British currency and a robust British industry after all the lame duck inefficiencies of the corporatist era. Such was the ideological mix that helped the Tories lead the charge against the social democratic settlement. It had not only shifted a segment of public opinion, and defeated the embedded liberalism that was the dominant strain of opinion in the Tory Party since the Macmillan-Butler era. Most crucially, it had shifted the consensus within the ruling class. The 'rule Britannia' stuff no longer works as well as it did, of course (Blair never really grasped that the energy behind this politics of 'the nation' had utterly exhausted itself by the time he became Labour leader), which is why the Prime Minister is David Cameron and not Michael Howard. But it served its purpose.

There was every reason why that project might have failed at a number of points, notably in its risky contests with the organised labour movement. Had it done so, the idea of a Labour leader that was hostile to unions and the welfare state would have been impossible. The defeat of the miners, more than the electoral defeats of 1987 and 1992 which were partially a product of that tragedy, made it possible for New Labour to emerge. It produced the viper in the breast of Labourism known as Tony Blair. Blaming this monstrosity on "the public" and its propensity to lie about matters of taxation is moronic.

*Other examples of which: "The right-wing phrase, 'underclass', was ugly, but it was accurate ... [those at the bottom] had dysfunctional lives, full stop" (p. 204); "people might say they don't like conservatives, they still vote for them" (p. 556). [hat tip, Chris Brooke] And so interminably on, the reactionary talking points offered with the familiar, demented self-assurance. And don't even look at the stuff on Iraq, Abu Ghraib ("undoubtedly exceptional offences"), Gitmo (which he says was right in principle, if done differently), asylum, etc etc.

Labels: capitalism, new labour, public spending, social democracy, socialism, taxation, third way, tony blair, trade unions, welfare

Thursday, September 02, 2010

Tony Blair must die. posted by Richard Seymour

Bless the former PM for reminding us why we despise every sordid molecule of him. Few British leaders apart from Margaret Thatcher have been so completely loathed. He has left his party in a wretched, miserable state, panhandling for votes from people whom its has previously shown contempt for. He has driven the country further and faster to the right than most of his predecessors. He has participated in the international adventurism and vandalism of the most right-wing American administration since WWII, with no regrets. And he has come back with his memoirs, his shitty self-serving redacted diatribe about his kampf, to remind us just exactly what it is about him that is so emetic. To his war crimes, he adds crimes against language and taste.

It is appropriate, perhaps, that one of the monsters of our age should communicate his de profundis to us in a style befitting the morning television chat show. The matey populism, the chattiness, and the familiar cliche-riddled inarticulacy, is surely the fitting idiom for a thoroughly modern serial killer. In another age, a moralist, Whig and Gladstonian imperialist of Blair's class would have adopted a manner of expression displaying the fruits of a classical education. Literature would have supplied the dominant tropes of even his extemporary remarks. Today, advertising and public relations are the supreme genres. But there's something else - the discursive style suggests that Blair probably made use of a ghost writer who transcribed his waffling while the former premiere gurgled from the shower or expatiated from the back seat of a limo. Blair would deny this, and has complained that Robert Harris was a 'cheeky fuck' for suggesting that he was such a lightweight as to require a ghost-writer. A plausible alternative is that he used a team of monkeys with typewriters and some unfortunate editors had to piece together the smarmiest copy.

Blair's fat little compendium of pseudo-revelations, attacks on personal acquaintances and colleagues, self-justifying circumlocutions, political polemic, and narcissistic reflections, comes with its own self-destruct button. Comparing himself to the 'people's princess', he says: "We were both in our ways manipulative people, perceiving quickly the emotions of others and able instinctively to play with them." Elsewhere, he informs astonished readers that sometimes politicians must "conceal the full truth ... bend it and even distort it". This being the case, you might suspect that he is not always being honest with his readers, and that the impression he tries to give of opening up and being fully frank is as counterfeit as his 'intelligence' on Iraq. You might wonder what is the point of your parting with a portion of your spending power even for one of the thousands of half price copies that your local WH Smith will be shoving in your direction, if all that's going to happen is that Tony Blair lies to you. Again. When all he's ever done is lie to you, at taxpayers' expense. Will there come a time, you might wonder, when we will stop paying Tony Blair to lie to us?

You would also expect, from the foregoing, that Blair's testimonial should be a masterful display of button-pushing, noodzhing, heartstring-plucking and tear-jerking. At the end of which, the former Prime Minister should emerge as an heroic liberal reformer stoically facing down the forces of conservatism, triumphing against the odds, vindicated by history and the big man upstairs, though privately nurturing a wounded soul. So, roughly, it turns out. From his earliest political and legal education at the hands of Derry Irvine, the eminence grise whom he has described as a 'tyrannical genius', to the scuffles with Gordon Brown, whom he cheerfully patronises, Tony is almost always right, or on the right path. He's macho too. We hear all about COBRA sessions and 'ticking clock' scenarios in which, for example, he came close to blasting a passenger jet out of the skies. White-knuckle negotiating sessions with Ulster's natives are duly described with a certain amount of colonial panache. The tough guy, swaggering, iron-in-the-soul stuff that is de rigeur for former statesmen of his ilk, is all there. But so is the love-me-tender vulnerability. He says he hit the bottle to manage the stress of his job. Boo hoo. Millions of people do that all the time - it's called alcoholism. Like the walrus, he says he cried for his victims in Iraq, before mercilessly consuming every one. He admits to a few 'small' errors here and there, of course. He is mortal after all, like Jesus or, his other role model, Diana.

Even when confessing to errors, though, what is most eminently on display is Blair's cynicism. When he cheerfully admits to lying through his teeth, manipulating everyone around him, he is sure to let us know of the effect this had on policymaking. On the freedom of information act, he tells us that it was an 'imbecilic' mistake because of the way journalists used it to ask questions about what the government was doing. Oh well, never mind our civil rights, Tony, if it inconveniences you in any way. On the fox-hunting business, he says he deliberately sabotaged his own legislation to let some forms of hunting continue, to the ire of Labour colleagues. At the end of these triangulations, he complains that he "felt like the damn fox". Poor thing. Hunted by mad dogs and mounted forces of conservatism, chased through the thickets of political intrigue, always on the brink of capture - but miraculously...

The ex-PM's Tory instincts are also prominent, as he again attempts to whip his party, the public and the world into shape. Having given his support to the coalition's austerity programme, which even the right-wing of the Labour Party is now shying away from, he orders Labour not to 'drift to the Left', as if the big problem for Labour is that it might start representing some of the millions of working class voters that it lost under Blair's watch. And he's pleading with 'the world' not to rule out the possibility of war with Iran. He hasn't had his fill of blood crimes yet. David Cameron, who has falsely alleged that Iran has nuclear weapons, would probably agree. Blair is not only a logical ally of this sham of a government, but is on its right-wing. To Clegg's right on war, to Cameron's right on identity cards, civil liberties and even immigration, Blair has never had any business as part of this country's organised labour movement. That he was ever its leader is a shame and a disgrace. Labour's members, supporters and affiliates should look at his memoirs, look at the way he's conducting himself in the press, preening himself, spouting his ridiculously reactionary opinions as if he hasn't been comprehensively discredited, and say to themselves: "never again".

Protest at his book-signing at Waterstones Piccadilly, next Wednesday, 8th September.

Labels: 'war on terror', advertising, afghanistan, capitalism, class struggle, iraq, labour, liberal imperialism, neoliberalism, new labour, socialism, tony blair, tories, trade unions, war crimes

Friday, April 02, 2010

"Nothing to do with democracy" posted by Richard Seymour

There's an amusing exchange between Bob Crow and John Humphreys on the BBC over Network Rail strikes which, with the use of some pretty onerous anti-union laws, were banned by a court injunction due to a balloting technicality. Humphreys tries every tactic in the book to insinuate that there was some sort of rigging involved in the balloting, or something suspicious about the union's conduct, and Crow skilfully demolishes him and takes the discussion back to the problems causing the dispute, and the unfairness of the laws by which they are obliged to work. Recall that BA workers were prevented from taking strike action last December in a similarly politicised decision by the courts, exploiting technicalities under the 1992 Trade Union and Labour Relations Consolidation Act. These anti-union laws were thus instrumental in assisting BA bosses whom industrial relations experts have accused of attempting to bust the union. They are, that is, a vital weapon in class war from above.

Unite and RMT are far from experiencing this legal attack for the first time. A couple of years ago, it was bus workers who were slapped down on a technicality - this being that the union had failed to detail the occupational grades of those taking action with sufficient precision. Last year, court decisions in favour of Metrobus further enhanced the employers' massive legal advantage. Keith Ewing of King's College London, writing as the BA strike was unfolding, noted that Britain's laws meant it fell foul of its obligations under international human rights legislation. The ILO Committee, reviewing the laws, have once more called for the government to consider abolishing them. That isn't going to happen, but nevertheless, the trade unions have consistently relied on New Labour, even where the chances were roughly on a par with those of a hell-bound snowball, to repeal Britain's atrocious anti-trade union laws. But Blair had pledged in opposition that his government would not only keep the laws in place, but would be the "most restrictive government against the unions in Europe". Gordon Brown has made clear his fidelity to this stance. It has to be such. New Labour's model of growth, which is its only means of delivering some modest reforms, depends on keeping labour markets flexible, with weak bargaining power. Meanwhile, the Tories and Lib Dems have made it clear that they are opposed to the "militant unions" and consider the government far too soft.

This is going to become an ever sharper issue as all major parties press for deeper cuts than Thatcher. Let me remind you of what's ahead of us, via John Lanchester of the LRB:

The reality is that the budget, and the explicit promises of both parties, imply a commitment to cuts of about 11 per cent across the board. Both parties, however, have said that they will ring-fence spending on health, education and overseas development. Plug in those numbers and we are looking at cuts everywhere else of 16 per cent. (By the way, a two-year freeze in NHS spending – which is what Labour have talked about – would be its sharpest contraction in 60 years.)
Cuts of that magnitude have never been achieved in this country. Mrs Thatcher managed to cut some areas of public spending to zero growth; the difference between that and a contraction of 16 per cent is unimaginable. The Institute for Fiscal Studies – which admittedly specialises in bad news of this kind – thinks the numbers are, even in this dire prognosis, too optimistic. It makes less optimistic assumptions about the growth of the economy, preferring not to accept the Treasury’s rose-coloured figure of 2.75 per cent. Plugging these less cheerful growth estimates into its fiscal model, the guesstimate for the cuts, if the ring-fencing is enforced, is from 18 to 24 per cent. What does that mean? According to Rowena Crawford, an IFS economist, quoted in the FT: ‘For the Ministry of Defence an 18 per cent cut means something on the scale of no longer employing the army.’ The FT then extrapolates:
At the transport ministry, an 18 per cent reduction would take out more than a third of the department’s grant to Network Rail; a 24 per cent reduction is about equivalent to ending all current and capital expenditure on roads. At the Ministry of Justice an 18 per cent reduction broadly equates to closing all the courts, a 24 per cent cut to shutting two-thirds of all prisons.

It's impossible to imagine all of this being accomplished. It's equally impossible to imagine the bosses, and the bankers in particular, relenting until the massive transfer of public assets to the banks has been paid for by the working class. Unless the economy magically grows at such a rate that deep cuts can be avoided, there is likely to be years of bitter conflict, not to mention a complementary dash of pandemonium in the streets. The major resistance to these cuts is going to come via the public sector trade unions. And while the courts will certainly not be the major venue in which such disputes are settled, it is hard to see the government relinquishing the tools that BA and Network Rail - to select just the most recent examples - have availed themselves of. It has previously made use of such legislation when dealing with prison officers, for instance. A campaign to repeal the anti-union laws would appear to be the appropriate solution to all of this, except that the government have given us every indication that they wouldn't listen to any campaign without a proportionate bite. In reality, only if workers acquire the confidence to break the union laws and strike anyway, as postal workers did with wildcat action at the start of the millenium - and won some surprising victories against management - will there be any chance of seeing an end to the laws. Now, I want John Humpheys to say that on air.

Labels: bbc, british airways, gordon brown, lib dems, militancy, new labour, tony blair, tories, trade unions, working class

Monday, February 15, 2010

What is progressive about David Cameron? posted by Richard Seymour

Serious question. Will Hutton likes Cameron's ideas. The current editor of the New Statesman says he takes Cameron's claim to progressivism seriously. The centre-left Prospect magazine has been carrying puff-pieces for Philip Blond's 'Red Toryism', the bland mood music for Cameron's leadership. Some liberals really want to believe the best about Cameron's conservatives.

Yet we have a man who is an ardent royalist, an opponent of multiculturalism and immigration, a supporter of war and an Atlanticist, a supporter of cutting taxes on the rich (he is particularly moved by government impingement on the unearned inheritance of rich kids), a friend of Murdoch, an ally of the most ferociously reactionary forces in Europe, a supporter of increased restrictions on abortions, a fairly traditionalist proponent of marriage (married couples will get tax breaks), and the current high priest of the small state. His shadow chancellor is an unreformed Thatcherite and union-basher. His closest allies in the Conservative Party are neoconservatives. He has, when opportunity arose, engaged in some fairly obnoxious baiting of ethnic minorities, specifically Muslims. Himself a descendant of royalty and child of a City stockbroker who got his first job with the Tories on the recommendation of someone at Buckingham Palace, his front bench is stuffed with venal millionaires. And he's basing his campaign on a line about a "broken Britain" which channels the most socially authoritarian Victorian moralising.

This has involved, among other things, disingenuously talking up the violent crime rate and massively exaggerating the rate of pregnancies among disadvantaged minors by a factor of 10. This article at the Economist systematically demolishes, with some detailed statistical analysis, Cameron's arguments about "broken Britain". But the Tories won't fret too much if their claims are shown to be fraudulent. After all, crime is an issue very akin to immigration in the sense that you can talk it up, bluster, lie, bully, and create a general sensation of crisis and deluge, with the assistance of the scum British press. Then you can deflect criticism by contending that you are merely articulating popular concerns that have so far eluded politicians living in the Westminster bubble. So, they won't mind if the liberal papers point out their little fibs. What is important to note is the ideological basis of the Tories' arguments. This is how Blair Gibbs, a senior Tory analyst and Chief of Staff for Nick Herbert's shadow environment office, explains the problem [pdf]:

The problem is cultural. The root cause is a combination of changing philosophical ideas . . and the long-term fundamental decay of conservative ideas and institutions in Britain. This includes an historically unprecedented collapse of belief in marriage and a consequent epidemic of illegitimacy and unsocialised offspring who, contra the expectations of our post-war intelligentsia, have not justified the age-old hope of Rousseau (that the absence of restrictions on humans produces happy peace) but have instead illustrated the truth of Hobbes (that the absence of restrictions on humans produces violence and despair.) The consequence of this collapse is welfare dependency, a rise in violent crime . . . .
There exists a large and increasingly violent underclass, because Britain suffers from a vicious circle: the collapse of belief in values (of family, marriage, self-responsibility) has now spread from the elites (where it has done philosophical and political damage) to the working classes (where it has done real physical harm). This is what has bred the underclass and the welfare system sustains it. Through the benefits system the welfare state pays the underclass to grow; poor state schooling cannot compensate for the harm caused by broken homes and absent fathers; inadequate policing cannot suppress the symptoms of crime and disorder.

This does exactly what it appears to do. It blames the poor for their situation because they have abandoned conservative values. By becoming liberal, by having abortions and the pill and free love, by not marrying or marrying less frequently, by having "illegitimate" children - illegitimate, mark you - they have caused their own downfall, and are now suckling at the welfare teat when they're not robbing, stabbing and raping their way through Broken Brittania. And it is precisely this kind of ideology, couched in more carefully selected terms no doubt, that were being invited to believe is progressive.

When David Cameron speaks of progress, he is consistent in equating it with attacks on the welfare state, support for 'stronger families', support for 'enterprise', etc. Asked by his would-be hagiographer-cum-amanuensis Dylan Jones about his position on Thatcherism, he ejaculates the following keyword-laden discourse: "[T]here were still big questions. Are we going to have a progressive amount of freedom and responsibility and independence and choice, or are we going to have a state knows best, know your place, rigid, class system? I thought that in all the big arguments, Thatcher and Major were on the right side, and Labour was on the wrong side." It's an idea that comes up a lot. Thatcherism is "progressive". To attack unions, cut welfare and bait immigrants is to mount an assault on the "rigid, class system". A high-handed social authoritarianism under the rubric of integration and cohesion is also progressive. And so on, and on.

The question is how did such claims even become vaguely intelligible? How did 'progress' as a discourse become a byword for reaction? The obvious answer is that New Labour made this possible. On every theme I've mentioned above, every objectionable facet of Tory policy, there is a New Labour counterpart - not exact, and not necessarily as extreme, but very real nonetheless. You want a party that baits immigrants, cuts taxes for the rich, allies itself with European reactionaries, trucks with neoconservatives, and calls all this progressive? It's been the ruling government for thirteen years. You want a party that prefers free markets and 'meritocracy' to 'the old structures', 'the old class systems', etc? You want a party whose matey populism abets an elitist agenda that adulates the rich and the unelected, pampered, scum royals? You want a party whose approach to crime is to sensationalise, and blame the poor, and ethnic minorities? You want a party of moralising and social authoritarianism, hedged with a modest concession to gay rights? And calls all that progressive too? Yeah, well, I think you've got the point by now. Tony Blair and New Labour systematically marketed every crackpot Tory idea they could lay their hands on as "progressive". And now David Cameron is a "progressive".

Labels: broken britain, capitalism, crime, david cameron, moral panic, new labour, progressives, progressivism, racism, rich, tony blair, tories

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Reg Keys on why Tony Blair is a war criminal posted by Richard Seymour

Via Stop the War. See also

Labels: british troops, iraq, new labour, reg keys, tony blair, US imperialism

Thursday, March 26, 2009

The apex of moronia posted by Richard Seymour

HL Mencken's description of Arkansas might have been revived to describe everything under the NATO canopy in 1999. Then again, his castigating of the "booboisie" would scarcely have gone amiss that year either. The tenth anniversary of the bombing of Serbia, supposedly the summit of that decade's growing humanitarian concern, should be the occasion for some wrist-slashing or hara-kiri on the part of those hideous ghouls who actually cheered the slaughter on. Though it wasn't the bloodiest of American-led wars, it was the occasion for some screaming, shuddering wargasms.

The moral ratification for such concupiscence was the contention that, in a corner of Europe not as yet integrated into the civilized integument of the European Union, genocide was (once again) unfolding. It would be redundant to revisit every article cynically rousing Holocaust memory, every quotation from a leading statesperson blithering about 'Europe' or 'Western values' (Ignatieff had surprisingly little to say about such narcissism, presumably because he partook of it), or every barbarity from Thomas Friedman. It is not necessary to catalogue the calls to "cleanse" Serbia, the demands for Serbia to be placed into receivership, the racial essentialism, the cries of "Not yet enough bombs, and they are already too late", Huntington's civilizational crap about Western humanitarianism versus Orthodox Serb barbarism, etc. Nor need we once again rehearse the numbers game, all of which distasteful charade was purely designed to reinforce the idea that there was an ongoing genocide which nothing short of an orchestrated campaign of high-tech violence could stop. The diplomatic record has been amply covered elsewhere, while the CIA's activities in helping lay the ground for war by making the KLA a proxy army of provocateurs awaits further elucidation. And the cover-up over Serbian civilian casualties, concealed within the raiment of 'surgical', 'precision' warfare aimed exclusively at the machinery of 'genocide', need not detain us.

It is enough to note that the ideas which produced this effusive outpouring of support for war were utterly berserk, and contributed to the deranged imperialism that liberals were to espouse during the 'war on terror'. Fresh from having pledged to fight for his country over Kosovo, David Aaronovitch defended Tony Blair's remake-the-world conference speech after 9/11 not so much against charges of "liberal imperialism" which were made in the New Statesman, but against the idea that there was anything wrong with liberal imperialism. Liberals, he averred, should try to run the world. The lesson of the Nineties was clear - do nothing, and you get Kosovo. Michael Ignatieff, having compared Serbian counterinsurgency to the Nazi holocaust, and demanded to know why the war was so late in coming, became a staunch advocate of "humanitarian empire". The age of postcolonial independence was a failure, as "populations find themselves without an imperial arbiter to appeal to" and so have "set upon each other for that final settling of scores so long deferred by the presence of empire". It was only unfortunate that America was so reluctant to fully assume the white man's burden. The liberal-neocon coalition over Yugoslavia, expressed by the Balkan Action Committee and its ads demanding a full invasion of Serbia, was carried forward into the new millenium and may well have continued to thrive had it not been for Iraq. It may yet be revived, over Darfur or a similar issue. The allure of a righteous kill, whether it comes with explicit overtures for empire or not, has hardly disappeared.

One other aspect of the war fever generated in the spring of 1999 was the sheer gratitude that many UK commentators expressed toward Tony Blair. I raise this because in a couple of talks and meetings, I have been asked to say something about why the lib imps so adore Tony Blair. It occurs to me that the love affair really began with Kosovo. Andrew Marr, later to issue a gushing benediction as the BBC's chief political commentator for Blair's war in Iraq, fell over himself praising the "brave, bold, visionary" new PM in the Observer. The liberal press were, as a rule, overjoyed to discover that their ally in Downing Street was no calculating cynic, but a true believer whose ministrations were as impassioned as their own. So unlike the previous, sleazy Major administration and its unprincipled stance toward Bosnia. Why, just look at the images of him, in his short-sleeved shirt, cuddling Kosovan refugees while his wife gently weeps in the background. Moreover, he was even more aggressive in pursuing that war than Clinton had been. There were strong indications that he would have favoured a ground invasion. As Blair became more adept at manipulating the commentariat, the loyalty he generated ensured that many backed him during his worst moments. Just as the antiwar movement was surging in numbers and feeling in early 2003, the neoconservative writer and current Tory MP Michael Gove wrote "I can't fight my feelings any more - I love you Tony". He was not the first or last to express such admiration. American warmongers always much preferred Blair to Bush, and the more the public hated him, the more they treasured for being so contemptuous of public opinion. Ten years on, the best the Atlanticists can do is groom a perpetually puzzled-looking David Miliband to take his place.

Labels: 'humanitarian intervention', air war, kosovo, liberal imperialism, serbia, the liberal defense of murder, tony blair, yugoslavia

Friday, May 23, 2008

One Israeli airstrike I would have cheered posted by Richard Seymour

So close...

Labels: Israel, tony blair

Monday, May 19, 2008

Cro-magnon Voter posted by Richard Seymour

You there - identify yourself! I suspect you could be an 'aspirational voter', despite the clinging musk of 'core voter' in your demeanour. If not AB then you are at least a C1, I warrant. Let's have a look at you. Yes, you are a bit of a slippery character. The trouble is, we're having difficulty designing a message that will make you vote for us. Last week, in party HQ, we devised a slogan that referred to the opposition as "Absolut Toffs". We thought that rather witty, and would go down as well with the aspiring Surrey single mothers as well as core heartland ordinary decent hard-working families from Blaneau Gwent. Sadly, the opposition routed us with a spin on the original, referring to us as "Absolut Balls", a cunning reference to the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Ordinary Decent Hard-working Families. So, we need to pull out the big guns. Judging from various biomorphic measurements, we think you are Middle England personified, the goldilocks of psephology, the sweet spot. You are aspiring but comfortable with your roots, open-minded but also sensibly bigoted, cynical but easily manipulated, a dreamer with one foot on the ground - the sort of person eulogised in Alanis Morrissette's 'Hand in My Pocket'. Sorry, can I ask, how did that reference to popular culture feel to you? I mean, did you believe it, or was it just a little bit strained? We have tried variants referencing Snoop Snoop Icy Dog T, but as yet none of the homeboys have produced a rap about embodying different, mildly opposing states of being. M & Ms, you say? I will look into it. Now, if I were to tell you that I could give you a hundred and twenty pounds, would you consider voting for me? Well, suppose I distributed in your monthly pay packets evenly throughout the year? That's ten pounds a month, enough to subsidise a mild nicotine addiction, or buy a twelve pack of generic imported lager. Now, what if as an added incentive I told you that we really dislike pollution and are totally opposed to the menace of cancer? And we also might brutalise asylum seekers just a tiny little bit? Not too much, just callously break up their families and inflict casual violence and penury on them until they feel a mite unwanted? I think we understand one another...

Yes, it's the bye-election of doom, and the above skit is an introduction to the marvels of Hainite electoralism. Peter Hain's suspicion is that the New Labour coalition that won in 1997 is breaking up, and may not win its 'historic fourth term'. He further avouches that this is because Labour is now offering two extremes. One, favoured by 'New Labour ultras', is the crude mimickry of Toryism that takes Joe Sixpack for granted and will do anything to mobilise the marginals. The other, bruited by ?, is hard left class war politics that will ultimately see Labour retreat to a 'comfort zone' without the votes of swinging suburbia. The Hain option is to steer a middle course between these hazardous extremes, courting all the elements of the coalition that led to New Labour's staggering majority in 1997. The trouble with this logic, as ever, is that it is based on the dismal pseudo-science of psephology, which treats voters as market-tested blocs to be manipulated with policy flavours and a few cheap bribes into prefering one management team over another. Its occasionally self-fulfilling prophesies determine the limits of the possible in the minds of New Labour strategists. Populations are strafed and cleaved with poor substitutes for class and ideology, such as 'identity', 'values', 'social type', and so on. Coventry Woman in coalition with Sierra Man will win it for the team, provided their libidinal 'value' glands are tickled. Then, perhaps by stealth, the team might be able to do a small amount of what it wants to do, provided it doesn't upset the rich and their media outlets. Such a logic is, of course, profoundly anti-democratic. It highlights how little the electoral process now has to do with registering the real needs and desires of the population.

Labour politicians have always thought that the right answer to being defeated by the Tories was to try to imitate them further. They tried it in 1987, and again in 1992, and somehow it didn't work. Time to move even further to the right, get the middle class on-side, flatter big business. By 1997, the Tories were in such a state and their ideas so hated that New Labour could win on less votes than it had lost with in 1992. A broom with a red rosette sellotaped to it could have won the election at that point. Now they are being punished by working class voters for a decade of right-wing rule, and they're still biting their nails about 'aspiring' voters (as if we 'core' voters lack aspiration). So, rather than banging your head against the brick wall of Labourism, you'd do better to have a listen to the surprisingly prophetic discussion by the late Paul Foot, supplied by the excellent resource 'Resistance MP3s': Part I and Part II. This was just after John Smith had died, and Blair and Brown were sealing the deal for what would become the monstrosity that we have lived under for over a decade now. Foot is brilliantly scathing about Blair and his supporters, and the basic analysis has hardly dated.

Labels: elections, gordon brown, new labour, paul foot, tony blair

Friday, April 04, 2008

Wall of Sound posted by Richard Seymour

Ady Cousins brings footage from last night's very noisy anti-Blair protest:

Labels: stop the war coalition, tony blair, wall of sound

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

What Happened Next. posted by Richard Seymour

If you think this is disgusting...

You should know that after Blair left the Kalandia refugee camp, the IDF stormed the place for over an hour. The Israeli PR department has apparently worked out the correct procedure: photo-shoot, then shoot 'em up.

Labels: Israel, palestine, tony blair

Thursday, May 31, 2007

'Honorary Paramount Chief' posted by bat020

"The one thing I have come to despise more than anything else in my 10 years is cynicism."

Labels: sierra leone, tony blair

Saturday, May 26, 2007

How popular are New Labour 'values'? posted by Richard Seymour

It's one of those words that the government likes to introduce into its policy announcements and PR quite a bit: 'values'. That oleaginous morpheme, and its shady associates (family, community, hard-working, honesty, decency, fairness etc) doesn't seem to have any real referent. Perhaps it is raised to reassure us that New Labour actually understands something beyond opportunism and plutophilia. Well, since Brown will now be using those vocables as often as possible, and as the latest British Social Attitudes Survey has come out recently, I thought I'd have a look at its findings and see if any of the 'values' espoused by New Labour hold much weight with the public. This survey, or surveys like it, have been produced for decades. Its reports don't focus on the same topics each year, and there is a great deal of interpretative commentary, yet there are some studies that have been going on for decades, and which therefore provide a picture of generational change and continuity.

Class and political identity
The first such findings relate to class identification. Tony Blair famously declared in 1998 that "we're all middle class now" and has consistently maintained that the class war is over - those are the "old divisions" that he and Brown want us to get over (by, for instance, restructuring education and the labour market with the claim that it will better equip the working class to deal with a neoliberal age - something they call 'equality of opportunity'). The public as a whole has thus far not internalised the conception of itself as an amorphous, largely middle class, consumer bloc. In 1983, when people were asked at the height of Bennism what class they belonged to, 61% said working class; in 1992, 60%; in 2005, 57% with 37% identifying themselves as middle class. (It was not asked on this occasion, but previous surveys have shown that three quarters of the British public believe there to be a "class war" in the UK). The researchers note that the unprompted identification with the working class has tended to be higher when "issues of social class came to the fore" such as in 1983, but on the whole "there is clearly no underlying downward trend of the sort we had expected". There has been a gradual decline in the number of people identifying themselves as working class, due to "the change over the last forty years in the shape of the 'objective' class structure, as defined by the proportion in manual and non-manual jobs", but still close to three fifths of people consider themselves working class. (One thing that has declined much more rapidly has been party identification. In 1987, 46% of people had very or fairly strong party identifications, which by 2005 had fallen to 35% - the number of people who "despite our persistent questioning" could come not name an identification at all had doubled from 7% to 13%. Of those who do identify with a party, the smaller parties are much more likely to feel a 'sense of community' with other members than either Labour or the Tories.

How does this translate into broader political attitudes? Well, predictably, the stronger the working class identity, the stronger the expression of views that there is class conflict: in 2005, of people who identified as working class and 'shared a sense of community' with them, 65% agreed that working people do not get their fair share; of those who stated a working class identity but didn't feel it to be based on 'close' affiliation, 58% agreed. Only 45% of those who identified as middle class agreed, whether they felt 'close' to others of the same class or not. Similarly, 58% of those with strong working class identification agreed that "business benefits owners at the expense of workers", and 50% of the same group that there is "bound to be conflict" between the classes (on this latter statement, 57% of those who strongly identified as middle class agreed). This in an era where there isn't much evidence of such conflict. When it came to trade union representation, although membership has continued to decline in most sectors barring the public sector (where representation remains solid at 58%, compared to only 17% in the private sector), one shift has been in the perception among union members of the efficacy of their union. Among unionised workers, the number believing their union actually makes the workplace either a lot or a little better has risen by 6%, precisely the figure by which those who think it makes no difference declined (only 5% think unions make the workplace worse). Among non-unionised workers, 66% thinks it makes no difference, while 7% thinks it makes the workplace worse. At the same time, this doesn't reflect perceived efficacy in winning good pay, at which only 3% of employees thought their union excelled. Despite the strong impression among non-unionised workers that belonging to one makes little difference, 41% say it is likely that they would join a union if there was one in their workplace (although, as you might anticipate, the likelihood of joining a union was much lower among those on the political right).

Pensions and redistribution
Any neoliberal government has won a great prize if it can privatise pensions, since pensions make up the greatest single chunk of social security expenditure. New Labour is too cautious to try doing that right away, but it is seeking to expand private provision, reduce state provision, introduce means-testing and extend working lives. Again, there appears to be a correlation between views expressed and social class (here defined by the authors in terms of employment status). Managers and professionals tend to be less supportive of universal state funding for pensions (36% in England and Wales, 50% in Scotland) than routine and semi-routine workers (47% in England and Wales and 60% in Scotland). As a whole, 59% of Britons support a universal state pension, but 61% of those polled think those on low incomes should get more money. New Labour's use of means-testing could be construed as an attempt to tap into those preferences, yet the result is that - as Age Concern has pointed out - the policy supposedly designed to achieve those desiderata, has actually increased poverty and reduced the access of the poor by introducing burdensome complexity to the claims process. Last year's survey asked specifically about support for means-testing, and 56% opposed it - although, again, there was implicit support for a different and very limited form of means-testing, that pertaining solely to a top-up on an already reasonable state pension. On a related matter, and one that is bound to come up, the 2005/6 survey also tested support for the flat tax proposed by some Tories versus progressive taxation - predictably, 56% of those on incomes above £50k supported it, while only 35% of those on incomes below £15k did; yet 37% of those on £50k or more support progressive taxation even where it means higher taxes for them. Similarly, approximately half of the public believes that "inequality continues to exist because it benefits the rich and powerful", with huge majorities in this group agreeing that the government should redistribute wealth, spend more money on benefits and increase taxes overall. A plurality of the overall population supports increased redistribution - 38% say the government redistributes too little, 28% say about right, and 13% too much. A fifth of the population has no view either way. On healthcare, the overwhelming majority, close to 80%, opposed any infringement on the universality of the health service.

Most people, 53% disagree with forcing people to save for their own retirement, and 67% disagree that it is people's "own responsibility" to save for any care they might need. 66% of routine and semi-routine workers think the government should be mainly responsible for income in retirement, while only 47% of managers and professionals think so. This is surely in part because managers and professionals are much more likely to have well-funded company pensions. Yet support for such policies is to a remarkable extent hegemonic, enjoying substantial cross-class support. Those who identify is being more to the left are 18% more likely to support universal state pension provision than those who are more to the right, yet that still means that 45% of right-wingers support such policies.

Worth mentioning that in Scotland, support for state funding of all pensions-related issues - whether care or decent income - is higher across the board. This suggests that opinion is partly shaped by what is politically realistic, since the Scottish Executive made a point of introducing free personal care for the elderly. I mentioned before that support for redistribution of wealth seems to follow New Labour's advocacy of such policies - to a limited extent, given the absence of a major political competitor for the left-vote, New Labour can set the boundaries of the possible, even among those who think the present distribution of wealth is deeply unfair.

Civil Liberties and Terror
New Labour's attitude to civil liberties was summed up in Blair's statement that traditional rights protect the accused at the expense of the ordinary citizen. He has insisted, whether rolling back habeus corpus, granting police new powers, or promulgating his hideous ASBOs, that the correct 'balance' be restored between victim and accused (not proven criminal, mark you - accused). Blair Despite the fervid atmosphere of the 'war on terror', most people don't seem to agree with him. In 1996, 56% of people thought it was worse to convict an innocent person than to let a guilty man go free, while 27% thought it was better to convict someone and risk him being innocent than let a crook go. In 2005, 52% of people thought it was worse to convict an innocent man, while 23% thought is was worse to let a guilty man go. The only rise in this period was among those who couldn't choose either way. Despite a fall from 73% in 1996, most people - 58% - still think the police should not be allowed to question someone for a week without the suspect seeing a solicitor. Similarly, although 45% of people support abolishing the right of trial by jury for those suspected of terrorism, 50% do not. And although New Labour increasingly criminalised protest (no-protest zones, anti-terror laws used to nick peaceful protesters), most people (63%) thought it was unacceptable to ban peaceful protests or demonstrations under any circumstances. In 1985, 1990 and 1996, this position was much more strongly held by Liberals and Labour supporters than Tories. In 2005, Tories are 14% more likely than Labour supporters to back such a position 'strongly'. Today, only 45% of Labour supporters back the rights of protesters 'strongly', while 59% of Tory voters do, as do 59% of Lib Dems. On torture, which the government professes to oppose anyway, there is a rather sickly fifth of the public who would accept the torturing of terror suspects in British prisons, but 76% find it unacceptable.

On some civil liberty issues, there has been a drift toward authoritarianism, some of which predates 9/11. While support for the death penalty fell from 75% in 1986 to under 60% in 2005 (still too high), the number of those 'strongly' supporting the rights of protesters still fell overall from 59% in 1985 to 51% in 2005. Those who 'definitely' think that those who seek to overthrow the government by violence should be allowed to hold meetings and publish books has fallen from 27% to 16%. Even though 84% agree that a country must always abide by human rights law when it is at war, 39% think that terror suspects should not be protected by human rights law, while 35% think that such law prevents the armed forces from doing their job. In 1990, more people disagreed with ID cards than agreed. In 2005, in this survey, 71% think it is a "price worth paying". Okay, the question presupposes a relationship between combatting terrorism and possessing an ID card that has yet to be demonstrated, but there has nevertheless been a shift. Predictably, a greater proportion of those opposed to ID cards thinks that the 'terrorist threat' is 'exaggerated' than those who don't, and that correlation holds on a range of issues from trial by jury to detention without charge. For about a fifth of people, the difference between supporting the government's position and opposing it is made by acceptance of the government's narrative of the 'war on terror' and its various dimensions. Even so, on most of its flagship policies and its expressed 'values' in relation to civil liberties, the government does not carry broad public support.

New Labour and Hegemony
The thing I wanted to emphasise here is not only that on a whole range of issues is New Labour in the minority - that can be the case when the consensus is fragmented. At any rate, polls taken on specific policy issues (war, PFI, benefit cuts) consistently find New Labour in a crushing minority. And it is not only that New Labour is consistently eroding the coalition of support it gained in 1997 mainly by attacking its working class base and Muslim voters. It is true that Labour's share of the vote in 2005 was reduced to 36% from 43% in 1997 (in the 2007 local elections, Labour got a mere 27% of the vote), and its overall plurality was less than 2%. Its support among AB voters was relatively well-maintained, down just 2% from its 1997 level, while among C2 voters, DE voters and council tenants, it fell by 9%, 13% and 9% respectively. Yet, again, that wouldn't necessarily redound to the left's advantage on its own. Public hostility to New Labour and its key policies can't realistically be in doubt. The question is, can an alternative coalition be forced? On the basis of the underlying 'values' reflected in successive studies and polls, there is a substantial basis of support for a rather old-fashioned left-wing programme of nationalisation, redistribution and trade unionism, alongside the urgent contemporary fight against the 'war on terror', and in defense of civil liberties. There is room for a sizeable left-wing coalition in British politics that isn't being given much expression electorally, yet potentially it embraces a much wider layer of people than the current supporters of New Labour.

It is easy to overstate this: I remember in the 2001 election, the Greens put out a press release claiming that if voting patterns reflected the patterns of policy support, they would be the party of government, and the main opposition parties would be the Socialist Alliance and the Liberal Democrats. Would that it were so. Even so: about forty per cent of people support increased redistribution of wealth, considerably more than would oppose it; a similar number supports nationalisation; there are overwhelming majorities in favour of withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, and against the nuclear redux; majorities continue to support higher public spending on benefits and the health service. It is also true that on some issues, there are large layers of people undecided - but then consensus-building is always a strenuous effort, and opinion surveys provide a glimpse of raw material, not a permanent political map. There are some low grumbles of dissent from within the remaining rump of Labour Party members - disproportionately a middle class, salariat bunch - but compared to leftist revolts that have befallen past failed right-wing Labour leaderships, this is limp stuff. Labour ain't the vehicle for those policies any more, and its current coalition can't hold. Liam Byrne, the cynically manipulative Blairite MP, recently told Fabians that Labour could win the next election by retaining the coalition of 1997. It is delusional stuff: aside from banking on the bolted working class horse returning to a prodigiously soiled stable, every indication is that when the Tories present a saleable centre-right candidate, New Labour's marginal voters and fair-weather AB supporters will go Conservative. Having watched their heartlands crumble, New Labour is set to watch its middle class and rich friends wander back to the fold.

Labels: capitalism, gordon brown, new labour, socialism, tony blair

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

The cloud that loured on Blair's house. posted by Richard Seymour

Now that Reid's out of the race, Charles Clarke has declared against running, and David Miliband isn't wasting his lack of charisma, the only question is if McDonnell will even make it onto the ballot. So, it looks like we're stuck with this bastard for the next few years.

Labels: elections, gordon brown, neoliberalism, new labour, socialism, tony blair