you thought Labour's policies couldn't get any more right wing, top party spokespeople have in recent days been outlining a new agenda - borrowed wholesale from the Tory right. Blair says crack down youth should have compulsory civilian national service. Straw comes out in favour compulsory competitive tendering: the council tax and ditching Clause Four.
And John Smith is set to of the party's links with the To cap all this off, Gordon Brown has unveiled the party's "new economics. Building on John Smith's recent notion that ownership of the means of production is now irrelevant. Brown openly re pudiates the practice of past Labour govern ments, and challenges the very idea of state economic action.
Key to the new economics is the following: The difference between left and right is not in the acceptance or rejection of the market - indeed the new the action taken by the commarket more competitive - but Labour's recognition that it is the community sduty to ensure that markets work in the public interest.
This is doublespeak of Orwellian proportions. To make the market 'more competitive is a codeword for forcing down costs, which in turn means forcing down labour costs; 'the community can only do this by forcing down wages.
In any case, what kind of mentality is it which thinks that the economic problems of Britain are caused fundamentally by markets simply being 'inefficient. Nowhere in the world is the "market currently deliverng prosperity; far from being the solution, market economic is precisely what gives rise to the kind of world-wide recession and mass poverty we are seeing today.
Orwellian
The community is another Orwellian codeword. The only content which Brown gives it is when he talks about long-term investment acreements ba. tween banks and companies, financial institutions and the Bank of England being the key to britain's The unions don't rate a mention.
Leave aside Brown's strange his bigoted calls for "tamily values' and compulsory religion? idea of community being made up of loan sharks and City spivs, bledegook. Long-term underinbase is not a product of the finmaking mistakes; it is a deliberate act ol poncy. ir comes out or britain s whole imperialist past.
Britain's ruling class has a conscious strategy to concentrate its investment on internationally-based service sectors particularly trade and banking. relegating manufacturing activity to the provision of low-wage crewdriver facilities geared to Japanese, US or even German companies which want a bargain basement foothold inside he Buropean Community.
Game plan
That's where the manic determinaton to avoid signing the social chapter, the abolition of wages councils, and recent moves wages and ensuren the working day come from. Permanent high unem. ployment to moderate wage increases is part of this game plan.
A Labour sovemment would find itself powerless to change this it it relied on hints and nis. ges to the financial 'community - some of the most hard-nosed people on the face of this earth.
Brown's speech contained other gems. The mantra-like rel potential was clearly depotential' was clearly desionca to iwoauce the term into common currency. The cconomic asenad must now be to modernise the British economy by advancing individual potential...The new economics asserts the basic goal of economic policy as the fulfilment of individual potential:
Moreover. The new coonomics is unmistakeably about suing the power of the community to advance individual Tory Education Secretary John Patten: one step ahead of Labour with potential. And to avoid misunderstanding let me be dear...it does not equate action by the community with state Thatcherism What then is it, this 'action by the community? Stripped of the the financial world promoting wattle it means promoting in economy in which individuals can make good, presumdory ar the expense dividuals. This used to be called Thatcherism In contrast with this utter abasement before Tory ideas, Bryan Gould has announced the "radical' ideas. Writing in the New Statesman he proposes that labour pledge itself to two simple promises: a job and a house for everyone.
That of course is an excellent starting point: but a house and a job for everyone is something which no capitalist economy can deliver today. To fight for this objective means fighting for a socialist economy; Gould is far from accepting this obvious the irony is that Labour's new rightism comes just at the time when DAF has collapsed, a company with a full order book and customers queuing up What better time to develop sodalist demands, for worksharing with no loss of pay, nationalisation of declaring bankruptcy and a massive programme of public Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke was panicked by Blair's 'get tough' line on crime into announcing detention centres for children. In other words he feared being outflanked to the right. Where will Labour's selfabasement end: when Tony Blair demands the reintroduction of the death penalty?