Election line-up
Blair plans second term rip-off - from the cradle to the grave!
Labour’s plans for a "Baby Bond" are a bitter insult to the millions of students who are struggling to pay tuition fees and facing debts of more than £15,000 as a result of New Labour’s policies.
They will also be seen as a sick joke by school students struggling in under-funded classrooms without cash for books or equipment.
Tony Blair unveiled plans to give a cash handout to new born babies, and occasional extra payments that might add up to £3,000 by the age of 18, claiming that it would help tackle child poverty.
But child poverty flows from the low pay, unemployment and inadequate benefits of their parents: tucking £300 in a bank account for use by the child 18 years later will do nothing to address these problems.
An increase in the minimum wage to the EU "decency threshold" of £7.40 would do far more to tackle child poverty than New Labour’s feeble bribe.
But behind the "Baby Bond" is a much more sinister shift of government policy. At the same press conference, Blair and fellow ministers reverted to the language of Thatcherism, arguing that a second term Labour government would require people to "stand on their own two feet", and end the traditional support from the welfare state.
Blair said "We want to encourage adults to save for themselves to help ride out difficult times: losing a job or becoming ill, for example."
David Blunkett went further and argued for a system of "self-help". He suggested a return to the old mutual systems, which were the only support for workers before the welfare state was introduced.
These warnings of New Labour’s future right wing policy ambitions came in the run-up to Tony Blair’s widely-expected announcement of an election on June 7 (though this is still awaited as we go to press!)
But they reinforced other significant hints that the privatisation and business-friendly policies that have so antagonised many of Labour’s core voters will be eclipsed by the onslaught as soon as Blair has won his second term.
Gordon Brown has said openly to TUC chief John Monks that the only sections of the public sector that would not be subject to privatisation would be the NHS and the police.
Of course the NHS is far from untouched by privatisation. Current plans would lead to a massive £7 billion worth of new privately financed hospitals by 2007, resulting in annual rental payments of £2.1 billion to consortia of banks and developers.
There is also a huge increase in use of private beds by NHS Trusts, and the increasing reliance on private nursing homes to fill gaps in NHS care of the elderly. Indeed there is not that much left of the NHS which the private sector would want to take over.
So if that is one area Brown wanted to leave alone, workers in education, the civil service and other remaining areas of the public sector had better get ready for tough times to come.
Blair himself has spelled out an exceedingly right-wing agenda for New Labour’s second term in a recent interview with a US business journal.
Speaking to Forbes magazine early in March, he made it clear that New Labour sees itself quite openly as the party of big business. Those hefty donations from millionaires and the continued close collaboration with Rupert Murdoch and the right wing press really have shaped Labour’s policies.
Blair told Forbes :
"Over the coming few years, corporation tax revenues as a percentage of national income will fall…"
"Our priorities for the next term are to carry on stimulating enterprise, through reforms in the taxation system, amongst others in relation to capital gains tax and corporation tax."
Business chiefs in the US were promised there would be no let-up in the anti-union laws Labour inherited from Thatcher:
"I have made it quite clear that we will retain a flexible labour market here…"
Life may still be hard for trade unionists and workers struggling to survive on a pitiful minimum wage, but Blair’s priorities are clear:
"My ambition is for Britain to be the best place for business in the world and in Europe in particular."
But Blair also sees his key role as a driving force for globalisation and the neo-liberal agenda of deregulation and privatisation, headed up by the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation:
"I think for Europe and for Britain it is important we use this time to push forward measures of liberalisation within Europe, and we have played a part of reorienting the whole of the economic agenda around economic reform in Europe. … At an international level we push ahead on the WTO…"
For teachers, Blair had a pre-election warning:
"I want to see far more emphasis on entrepreneurship in schools, far closer links between universities and business. I want to see us develop a far greater entrepreneurial culture. We have only just gone beneath the surface of this so far."
There will be no respite for beleaguered public sector workers, with Blair still delighted at the extent of privatisation driven through by the Tories, and which New Labour has extended:
"There are many steps of liberalisation going on at the moment. If I go to my constituency now, our country is more liberal in this way – my electricity and my water are both owned by French companies…"
The onslaught on the unemployed with the "workfare" system ushered in by Labour’s "New Deal" will also continue, with people being forced into low-paid jobs for fear of losing benefit:
"When I came to office one in five non-pensioner households had no one working in them, right? We’ve reduced enormously the number of benefit claimants. We’ve introduced tough measures on welfare reform.
"You know, you lose your benefit if you’re not taking the training and job opportunities. So there is a whole series of measures we’re putting through, and it’s vital we’ll carry that on.
"There’s performance-related pay for teachers. There’s the whole reorganisation of our health system going on, there is a big agenda there for a second term."