IT USED TO BE said that there were only two things certain in life – death and taxes. Under Tony Blair, of course, the latter is a little less certain. Actually, the way in which he tried to take over the national mourning for Diana suggests that he is working on the former too.
But let us hazard a guess that Tony’s hair is indeed going to thin and go grey and that his waist is indeed going to thicken and go saggy… and that he is going to become subject to mortality despite all his image-makers can do for him. What is going to happen then?
When Blair's Bubble Bursts, where will you be?
The signs are already there. Blair’s Labour government is not disappointing its enemies – it never wanted to please us in the first place – but it is disappointing its friends. Look at these comments in the media
"(Blair) preaches "giving". He will be judged by whether he has given in to Thatcherism."
"The growing realisation is that we may soon not be able to look to the Labour Party to represent what we believe."
"Australian politics are known to influence New Labour – so the message is clear. It should prepare to move to the left."
Who said the above? Not socialists, not "old Labour", not even the Blessed Lord Roy of Hattersley. No, it was the Editor and Business Editor of the Observer, some of the strongest to encourage Blair in the "new" direction to abandon Clause IV and public ownership and the means of re-distributing what the Tories had unfairly distributed over the last 18 years.
EMU
In business circles the same disappointment is forthcoming. European Monetary Union is demanded by Blair’s business "partners".
So much headway has been made by Blair in enlisting trade union support for his "project" that the trades unions themselves have joined (at TUC level anyway) in the call for Maastricht’s rigid anti welfare state criteria to be adopted – with a call of "when do we want them? Now!"
As for the "people", those sweet ordinary somethings who Blair was so keen to "include" in a Whitehall open-door approach, look at the patronising pat on the head which Blair gave Blunkett after the latter’s speech on education to the Party Conference.
Who can forget the secret shake of the hand which Blair gave to Gerry Adams, paternally elevating him to "human being" status?
Hence Blair’s language before the Election: to people who are black, or disabled, or lesbian or gay, he pronounced that these "differences aren’t important".
To all those suffering disadvantage generally, he envisaged a society which would be fair to ordinary people. Equality is for all "ordinary" people. Discrimination is "unimportant". Four legs good, two legs better.
But Blair seems upset when his erstwhile friends become surprised by his new (newer?) directions. Don’t they understand, he petulantly asks, that the Tories are still in Government?
Treasury
Don’t they understand that the "Treasury" has set these spending limits? One local Labour Party leaflet, in a constituency with a fair number of middle class parents, advises its readers to "join the Labour Party" if they are concerned about tuition fees for higher education, as it is the "Treasury" which is to blame for all the difficulties!
The same goes for health. Poor Frank Dobson has no choice but to live within the government (that’s the Tory Government) spending limits. John Prescott likewise, cannot tackle environmental and transport concerns.
It’s the government (that is, the Tory government) which held public inquiries into road schemes and Runway Extensions and these inquiries were properly held and there’s nothing we can do about them.
And the Mersey dockers should know better than to ask their union leadership (the mighty TGWU) or the government (13% share-holders in their employer's company) for support in their dispute.
They (the Labour government and the TUC) would be breaking the law. Their hands are tied. There’s nothing they can do about it, is there?
(Except of course that if the Tories had won again, taxes would have gone up by now to pay for the economic deficit they had left for their successors.)
Any willingness Clarke and Heseltine may have had to join a one-nation party of left-Tories, new-Labour and middle-ground Liberal Democrats, must have gone out of the window – now that they have effectively positioned themselves to the left of Blair.
But a lot of us are not Blair’s friends. Dockers, deportees, disadvantaged, disenfranchised, discriminated against … people can’t wait for Blair's bubble to burst. We have to help make it happen.
This is because new Labour’s new danger is still the same old danger: that the opposition to its sunshine smile and Camelot carry-on will come from the far Right.
To redress the balance, to counter the threat, there is no single right answer. No-one has a monopoly of ideas.
Instead there is a compelling argument for developing alliances of forces. Socialists, environmentalists, direct action campaigners, trade unionists, need to join together in new ways of working across the issues and across the regions, to say that there is an alternative (there has always been an alternative) to the free-market madness of Blair and Major, Hague and Thatcher.
This is what the Liverpool dockers have represented, in making links with many non-traditional forces; and this is why their struggle is not old but new.
Their struggle is about challenging the globalisation and casualisation of work and workers everywhere, about connecting the environment with the economy, and about raising the standard of human dignity against the oppression of the new capitalists and their "partnership" politics.
Their struggle is all our struggle. Their victory will be all our victory. Morris and Blair could do with remembering that this is where their organisations come from, before they themselves are consigned to the place in history which they seem so eagerly to desire.
And we need to put them there, not just sit back and wait for the bubble to burst.
John Nicholson is Convenor of the Network of Socialist Alliances in England