Editorial 1
Second term blues
Stand by to repel privateers!
Blair’s most coveted prize, a second term with another massive majority, has been secured – with a "landslide" victory on the back of just 25 percent of the electorate.
Blair has completed his cull of ministers, humbling ousted Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, dumping the servile but ineffectual Chris Smith, ignoring the irrelevant Frank Dobson, sacking the tainted Keith Vaz, and promoting the most abject, right wing Blairite hacks – Jack Straw, David Blunkett, Patricia Hewitt, and Estelle Morris.
The new ministerial appointees and those staying in their former posts will gladly pocket thumping pay increases, and then join with MPs from all parties in voting through another huge 11 percent increase in MPs’ salaries.
But while millions of Labour voters were persuaded, many against their better judgement, to give Labour the benefit of the doubt and a second term to deliver radical change, it is unlikely they will be too pleased with the menu of policies that are coming down the line.
The first hints of measures to come centre on a crackdown on price fixing – to help make Britain the "most competitive marketplace in the world".
Blunkett is predicted to be even more right wing a Home Secretary than Jack Straw, and reportedly has plans to get even tougher on asylum seekers and to step up Labour’s ill-conceived "war on drugs".
Morris, along with Alan Milburn who remains as Health Secretary, will aim to push through Labour’s plans for private firms to run schools and hospitals, while Stephen Byers now at Transport will combine subsidies to private rail operators with privatisation of the London tube – and a new round of road-building!
Already union leaders are doing their best to emit a menacing growl to frighten Blair off any new wave of privatisation. But the warnings from the GMB’s John Edmonds, TGWU leader Bill Morris and UNISON’s Dave Prentis sound more like a whimper of dogs wanting to be let back in after four years in the cold.
These ‘leaders’, who have already been cautioned by TUC chief John Monks not to risk another "winter of discontent", may succeed in holding back strike action: but Blair’s second term seems certain to provoke a new, intensified level of debate in the trade union movement over the traditional political link with Labour.
Postal workers have spelled out strict conditions for continued CWU support to Labour, while the fire fighters have changed the rules to enable support for other parties.
Even UNISON, whose communications chief Maggie Jones is currently chair of New Labour and a dedicated agent of Millbank, felt obliged to register its political displeasure at the government’s refusal to compromise with the Dudley Hospital strikers fighting privatisation – and, according to Dave Prentis, cut its election donation to Labour by £250,000.
The fight is now on to match every Labour attack on the public sector and working class with a challenge to its political control in the trade unions, and public campaigns to spell out a socialist alternative.
It may be a second term with a massive majority, but a vigilant, active left can make sure that it is not "business as usual" for the Blairites.