British Labour in 2007
As we enter the new year, the first task for Labour should be to draw a line under an egregious error made in its name – an error that began with an abuse of power and a breathtaking deception of the British people, and then proceeded to devastate a faraway country, undermine the rule of international law, threaten the fragile integrity and cohesion of British society, increase the burden of religious division – in Britain, the Middle East and around the world, advance the claims of terrorism, and engulf the entire ten-year record of the Blair government in disrepute. It is hard to think of a parallel in modern times to such a tragic catalogue of catastrophe brought about by the blind certainties of an inherently good man.
Tony Blair’s departure will help to draw that line. So will the election of a new leader. That new leader, however, will face a Herculean task if a fresh start is to be made and a renewed mandate obtained.
If the new leader is Gordon Brown (as I – and most others – assume it will be), his first hurdle will be the need to demonstrate that, without the presentational skills of a Tony Blair and faced with a Tory opponent who is at least electable, he can still engage with the British electorate and enlist their support.
His best strategy in approaching this task is to be himself – to demonstrate that, when the voters look at him and the Labour Party, what they see is what they get. So, what is needed is an end to spin, to the short-term preoccupation with electoral advantage and news manipulation at every turn, and a return to recognisable Labour values – values updated and adapted to society’s needs of course, cutting-edge values applied to new and as yet unrecognised issues, but values so true to Labour that voters will feel that they know where they are.
So, let us have an end to hobnobbing with the rich and powerful, to riding shotgun for the Americans however crazy the enterprise, to the indifference with which widening inequalities in our society are tolerated, to the casual assumption that the government is above the law, to the disdain for the Party and the trade unions, to the belief that globalisers like Rupert Murdoch represent the only possible future, to the gut instinct that the private sector will always offer better solutions than the public sector, to the carelessness with which divisions in our already divided society are exacerbated, and to the self-serving belief that what the government wants is, for that reason alone, good and right.
Let us, in other words, have an end to New Labour (or, rather, Not Labour). Let us have instead Labour tout court, Labour unadorned, Labour true to itself. That would free the new leader to use 2007 to begin to build a new trust with the voters, based on a commitment to restoring the cohesion of our society, across social, economic, ethnic and religious divides. It would mean a return to Robin Cook’s ethical foreign policy, so that a relationship of trust is extended to include our international partners. It would mean recognising that the current world order, disfigured as it is by huge and growing imbalances and a dizzying attempt to stop the United States from toppling off the high wire of its unsustainable deficit, must be reformed.
It would mean a return to that central Labour preoccupation with diffusing power and wealth throughout society, rather than aiding and abetting its concentration in fewer and fewer hands. The new leader could give priority to the real economy in which most people live and work rather than the financial economy which disproportionately rewards the few, reassert the value of public service and the public domain, and return the most important decisions about the economy to the democratic process rather than handing them over to self-serving bankers.
If any of this is to be attempted, let alone achieved, there is no time to lose. It is essential that the first part of 2007 should not be wasted on the personal rather than collective project of protecting what remains of the Prime Minister’s reputation. The sooner the new leader is in place, the better.
Bryan Gould
19 December 2006
This article will be published in the first 2007 issue of The Parliamentary Monitor.
The Democracy Sham
In The Democracy Sham: How Globalisation Devalues Your Vote, Bryan Gould considers the impact of the global economy on the democratic process in a number of countries, including New Zealand and Britain. He shows that international capital is, by virtue of its freedom to move at will across national boundaries, now able to dictate to democratic parties and elected governments the economic and other policies they can and cannot pursue. The result is that the political choice offered to voters has, without their realising it, been narrowed and constrained and the voice of the left has been muted and virtually extinguished.
Bryan Gould explains the development of the global economy and the reasons for its current hegemony. He shows that the orthodox justifications for globalisation – that it has delivered better economic and other outcomes for both the world economy and individual countries – cannot be supported, and that it has, on the contrary, produced a global slowdown and unsustainable inequalities and instabilities on both the international and domestic scale.
He looks at the political implications of what he describes as an historic shift in the balance of power between capital and labour, and at the failure of parties of the left to mount any effective resistance. He concludes by considering the steps that could and should be taken to restore balanced and sustainable economic development in the world economy and a fully democratic choice to voters in countries as diverse as New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
The Democracy Sham: How Globalisation Devalues Your Vote is published by Craig Potton Publishing in September 2006.
National Radio Interview
Bryan Gould was interviewed by Chris Laidlaw about The Democracy Sham on New Zealand National Radio on the morning of Sunday, 10 September. Excerpts from the interview appear below.
“What I am concerned to do is to dispel the notion that the social and political and environmental downsides [of globalisation] that are becoming increasingly apparent can be offset by economic considerations…in other words, the economic story is not a good one either. National governments have found the going tough and internationally the economy has grown quite slowly since globalisation and has been marked by tremendous inequities and uncertainties and instabilities.
If we’re drawing up a balance sheet, and we can show that it’s not very strong on the economic side, that then frees us to look at the political and environmental and social consequences that I think are inimical to the kind of world economy we’re trying to develop.”
“It’s not surprising that people have on the whole been persuaded that globalisation has meant better times because for some people it has. What you have to ask is, but which people? It turns out that those who have done well, both globally and within national economies, have been the top ten or twenty per cent. They are able to develop the myth of better times for all by virtue of their ability to influence the way the media treats these issues. The facts show that many people – certainly those below the median point and some of those even above it – have not done well out of globalisation, and that’s true in strictly economic terms as well as in terms of controlling their own lives and influencing events close to home.”
“I wrote the book to answer the question as to why, when there is so much unhappiness about particular aspects of globalisation across the political spectrum, these concerns have so little political traction. The answer is, I think, that people have lost touch with the sort of analysis that I have tried to develop. They tend to look at third world poverty or threats to the environment or the loss of control to multinational corporations as separate, individual and discrete issues rather than as manifestations of the huge loss of control that has flowed from the ability of international capital to dictate to elected governments what the political agenda should be. So, without people being aware of it, the political debate has been narrowed, so that no major party, either in power or seeking power, dares to pursue a policy, either economic or flowing from economic policy, that would discomfort the international investors on whom they think they depend. So, even quite liberal or radical governments, like the Labour government in New Zealand, tailor their economic policies to suit international investors.”
“Thirty or forty years ago, overseas investors would have to negotiate terms with the elected government of a country in which they wished to operate. That government would specify the terms that were needed to reflect the interests and needs of their electorate. Today, the free movement of capital around the world means that international investors – and that means in reality fewer and fewer but bigger and bigger – can roam the world looking for the most congenial conditions, with the result that across the globe wage rates are driven down, and the treatment of profits becomes ever more favourable because competing governments feel that they must do what is required of them if they are to secure the investment they need.”
“One of the many downsides of increasing globalisation is that there are fewer and fewer companies [in a country like New Zealand] flourishing and maintaining their headquarters in New Zealand….That means that fewer and fewer decisions about our economy are being made in New Zealand and that decisions about how workers should be treated and where investment should be made are being made by people who don’t even know where New Zealand is, let alone care about it. And there are some severe economic consequences as well. One of the major burdens overhanging the New Zealand balance of payments is the huge proportion of our economy accounted for by repatriated profits and the interest we pay to [purveyors of “hot money”] in order to finance our deficit.”
“You can’t argue that the huge power of international capital will be deployed to secure the best outcomes from the viewpoint of the international investor, which means that only market values and market forces that impact on the bottom line will be taken account of, and that they will then sit back and allow governments to come along and change those outcomes. This is not a play exercise. International investors want certain outcomes and they will insist on getting them. They might allow a little cosmetic exercise at the margins but they are not going to allow claims for social justice to override the infallible market. The deliberate objective of free market economics is social injustice. The dice must lie where they fall.”
“I think it’s quite possible that the pendulum [of intellectual fashion that would normally allow a change of policy in the light of increasing dissatisfaction with globalisation] may have got stuck because of the power of international capital and the international media, which are just a subset of that same group, to dominate the agenda.”
How Has Labour Done?
My friend and colleague, Austin Mitchell MP, asked me a month or two ago to write a short piece for the House Magazine on the state of the Labour government. He was kind enough to publish it on his own website but I reproduce it here for visitors to this site.
“What is the role of the Left in an advanced democracy like Britain? What can reasonably be expected of a Labour Government? And these two questions prompt a third. Does the Labour Party still represent the Left in British politics?
My answer to these questions (which were often raised with me by Labour Party members on my recent visit to Britain) is a personal one and starts with a proposition. In every society, power – unless checked – tends to concentrate in fewer and fewer hands. Britain is no exception. The powerful will always use their power to make themselves more powerful. The role of the Left in a properly functioning democracy is, surely, to counteract that concentration of power. The true business of Left politics, in other words, is (pace Mrs Thatcher) the diffusion of power throughout society.
If that is to be achieved, the less-than-powerful majority must use their democratic political power to put in place a government that will achieve that purpose. That is what they think they are doing – even if not articulated – when they elect a Labour government.
The expectation of a Labour government is, therefore, that it will restrict the growth of untrammelled economic power, especially in sensitive areas like the media. It will ensure that political power is equally shared – that the democratic process is maintained in good shape and that human and civil rights are protected. It will allow less powerful people to organise themselves so that their collective strength can protect them against the economic force of powerful individuals and groupings. It will guarantee the basic decencies of life to all in society, irrespective of their power or lack of it in the market-place, so that their life-chances are not arbitrarily restricted. It will develop the cohesion of society so that communities as well as individuals have a role to play and enjoy a stake in its success.
None of this means that Left politics must always act against the powerful. Nor does it mean that the undoubted and unique benefits of market operations must be eschewed. It takes no account of other important requirements of good government, of which basic competence and good sense would rank high on the list and where the Labour government has, arguably, scored well. But it does mean that Left politics, and a government of the Left, should be distinguished by their willingness to restrain the powerful and to ensure that the less powerful are not overlooked or ground down and are, on the contrary, encouraged and liberated.
This is not, it should be noted, a revolutionary agenda. It owes little or nothing to Marxism. It is, on the contrary, a sober, careful and non-ideological statement of what might reasonably be expected to distinguish a government of the Left from that of any other persuasion.
So, how much of this can we see in today’s politics? And how does the Labour government measure up?
The answers are – not much and not well. We see a Labour government which pays excessive attention to the powerful, both internationally and domestically, and which apparently believes that nothing can or should be done without their support. We see a Labour government that is prepared to endanger the democratic process and civil liberties by placing the interests of government and other big players ahead of those of ordinary people. We see a Labour government that has pursued an economic policy that favours asset-holders but jeopardises the jobs of those who make and sell things, a government that has – in areas like education – re-introduced unwelcome and unnecessary divisions, a government that apparently distrusts the idea of community and collective organisation, and prefers to entrust the functioning of society to the unchallenged market-place.
If I am right in identifying a gap between what a Left government might reasonably be expected to do and what a Labour government has actually done, we might begin to make sense of the current political landscape. That gap means that there is a void in British politics – a hugely significant part of the political spectrum is no longer represented in the politics of power. This is more than just a deficiency, or an absence. The democratic Left, which has been the wellspring of so much that is progressive, innovative and reforming in Britain, finds that it is not only unrepresented but has actually been supplanted by what it thought was its own instrument – that, instead of what should be its voice, a different and contrary voice is heard.
This in turn explains the sense of disappointment, even of betrayal, that I found so often expressed. Left activists and supporters are at best bewildered and apathetic, at worst angry but impotent, at what has happened. There is a powerful sense of lost opportunity. The thoughtful realise that the opportunity presented by an overwhelming popular mandate for change, the intellectual bankruptcy and debilitating divisions of the Right, and a consequent period of virtually unchallenged power in government, is unlikely to be repeated.
They know that, while the Tory party may still – under an unproven leader who has yet to demonstrate any substance – lose the next election, there is a palpable sense that the balance of political advantage is shifting. David Cameron is at least succeeding in drawing a line under the disintegration of the past fifteen years and signalling that a new Tory Party is ready to contest for power. The risk to Labour is compounded not only by the cumulative failures that attend the progress of any government but by the loss of trust and sense of disappointment on the part of its own natural supporters.
As the Blair period draws to an end, and an unparalleled window of opportunity closes, an alleged government of the Left will not only have wasted a unique chance of promoting real change. They will have achieved the reverse of what many of its supporters expected. They will have presided over, even engineered, an entrenchment of power for the powerful. Gordon Brown may well find that his inheritance is worth little more than a mess of pottage.”