THE TORY onslaught on the wel fare state is also fuelled by the very ideological notions which drove on the original Thatcher project.
Major's team is equally wedded to the concept of the free market as the solution to every problem-whether it be highly profitable telephones and water supplies, or the more problematic railways, hospitals-and now even nurseries.
The icon of privatisation as a supposedly superior method of delivering cach and every conceivable service has been stretched beyond previous imaginable limits: we now have private prisons, private mental hospitals, and plans for private companies to own and manage NHS hospitals.
The Tories have won the last four elections above all by promising (though of course not delivering to most peopie, sow takes oy watch ucy mean low direct taxes, supplemented by larger indirect taxes, charges and payments by the individual.
One factor crippling Blair's response is that he, too, has stolen the low tax slogan, preventing the party from offering any radical alternative or any reversal of the Tory cuts.
Even the most daring Labour respoase to the education cuts has been to demand a big increase in council tax. daringly busting the government cap. only to foist the bill on individual householders.
While this is preferable to axing teachers jobs and increasing class sizes, the key issue is the fight for adequate central goverment funding, deSo far has Labour lurched down the road of Tory tax philosophy that a batte must now be waged in the labour movement to uphold the principle of a steeply progressive income tax, which is a key step to making the rich pay for the restoration of services decimated by a decade of Tory tax handouts.
Also lurking in the Tory ideological arsenal are the reactionary weapons of racism and sexism. The racism is given fullest vent in the attacks on the welfare and other rights of asylum seekers and immigrants, reinforced by Michael Howard's 'Snoopers" Charter', which aims to force public service workersin the NHS. schools, colleres and social security-to denounce black people they suspect of being illegal immigrants.
The sexism emerges in the unstated assumption that the larger number of frail elderly, people with mental illness ananase a can assoles will be offered no formal welfare state assistance, but cared for without obvious cost to the taxpayer-by (larkely icmale) relatives at home.
This colossal hidden privatisation dominates the lives of six million carers saving the state an estimated £27-£30 billion a year.