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The British ruling class want the Tories back
Son of a Conservative Party organiser in the North East of England, Tony Blair was the safest pair of “Labour” hands Britain 's ruling class has ever had. From the ruling class’ standpoint Labour without Blair is less predictable and malleable and a bit more prone to trade unionist, working class, and Keynesian economic influences.
With big changes at home and abroad about to happen, better to have at the helm the leader of your own party. In any event, Blair’s and Brown’s New Labour job is done. They delivered an even more docile and compliant Labour and trade union movement than existed two decades ago and it’s a very good time for them to go and let the number one party of capitalism take over again.
The 4th June results in the English local elections and the UK European Parliament elections confirmed the trend of opinion polls for more than a year now: the Tories are well ahead in UK voters’ intentions. So a new Tory Government is a distinct probability and there is much for a new Tory government to be concerned about to protect the interests of those they serve, especially dominant finance capital:
* There’s a new reforming President in the White House who will be in the vanguard of changes to the international financial and monetary system.
* Similarly in the UK , there will be changes to how our banks and financial institutions are run and regulated.
* There will be major changes to how Parliament is run in the wake of the MPs’ expenses scandals; and we are told,
* There will be significant constitutional changes.
Plans and blueprints on all of these important matters are already being drawn up; and for Britain ’s ruling class, who governs and who speaks for Britain is vital and time is of the essence. But how do you get your hands on parliamentary and legislative power now? You need a General Election and the sooner the better.
Friendly fire
Enter the Daily Telegraph - or the Torygraph as some wags would have it - arguably the most influential broadsheet of Britain 's ruling class. It has deliberately launched a sustained and all out assault on the British Parliamentary system that has left its parliamentarians reeling.
War is a risky and unpredictable business. But all aggressors who wage war do so in the certain knowledge there will be casualties on all sides. Class war is no different. Casualties are inevitable in pursuit of the greater cause: in this instance, a Conservative electoral victory and control once again of all the levers of parliamentary and legislative power. After all, it’s been more than 12 years since the last Tory leader occupied No 10 Downing St.
How else can we explain former Conservative Party leader Michael Howard’s outburst that the “Telegraph should hang its head in shame” for what it is doing in its daily dripping roast of revelations of MPs’ expenses scandals, including those of the erstwhile Tory leader himself.
No longer in the ruling class’ High Command, Michael Howard and others like him are acceptable and calculated ‘friendly’ casualties of war.
For two years now the clear and open strategy of the British ruling class and its ‘Torygraph’ broadsheet has been to precipitate a big enough government crisis that forces the Labour Prime Minister out of office and a General Election before 2010.
And what a job they have done. The occasion this time round was the widely predicted disastrous for Labour 4th June election results. By Friday 5th June, after a month of the Telegraph’s MPs allowances scandals - Cabinet and Junior Ministers by the barrowload had resigned and some of them thumped their leader in the solar plexus as they walked out the door. One of them, former Work and Pensions Secretary, James Purnell MP even demanded that Brown, “stand aside to give our party a fighting chance of winning” in the General Election.
The day before Purnell departed, Communities (local government) Secretary, Hazel Blears MP announced she was quitting - the day before England ’s local government elections. This was nothing less than an angry act of sabotage for which she has now apologised. And after Purnell came Europe Minister, Caroline Flint MP who scornfully accused the Prime Minister of using her and other female Labour ministers as “little more than female window dressing.” (sic).
This was barely disguised odium. So why does Gordon Brown provoke such detestation among his parliamentary and ministerial colleagues? What’s important about all of the above Cabinet Secretaries and Minister and most of the others who went with them is that they were all staunch supporters of Tony Blair.
It is no secret that for most of his political life, Gordon Brown believed his ‘destiny’ was to be Leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister. That ambition has consumed him since he became an MP in 1983 and especially since Labour ended 18 years of Tory rule in 1997 when Tony Blair, at his friend Brown’s expense, became Labour Prime Minister.
Since then Brown (and his intimidating Westminster praetorian guard) worked day and night to position himself as the unassailable next Labour leader after Blair. When it became clear that Blair was not for going when the two former friends agreed he should, Brown saw his ‘destiny’ ebbing away. It was Brown and Brown alone who masterminded and led the sustained Westminster campaign that eventually forced Tony Blair to announce a date for his premature departure.
Blairites' revenge
The Blairites have never forgiven Brown for what they believed was a bitter, disloyal and underhand campaign against the man they believe was Labour’s best ever and most successful leader.
For the first two years of Brown’s Premiership, the grieving and vengeful Blairites, relatively speaking, kept quiet. Their first and their best chance to unseat Brown came at the 2008 Labour Party conference in Manchester when Brown was trailing badly in the polls following the series of damaging leaks and mishaps that followed on from his failure to go ahead with the General Election he had planned for November 2007. A combination of Brown’s major conference makeover, his organisation and ruthless tenacity combined with the Blairite plotters’ lack of nerve saw off any challenge to his leadership.
But now? Well, they tried again during the first week of June and they failed again. At the height of the “Brown must go now” June crisis, the Blairites smelt blood and frenziedly pounced on Brown like a pack of what turned out to be toothless wolves.
Brown survived their mauling. He’s battered and badly bruised but he is still alive and kicking and could very well hobble on for some time to come and give his party some scintilla of hope that an economic miracle will occur that can make them electable again.
On 5 June Brown re-shuffled his ministerial pack in a classic spin manoeuvre of “moving the story on to something new” and shift the spotlight from himself. That re-shuffle saw Lord Mandelson promoted to the role of what is effectively Brown’s Cabinet Enforcer. Brown’s last reshuffle saw Mandelson brought back from Europe to quell the Blairites who know and regard Mandelson as one of their own.
While that may well be true, what Mandelson is much more wedded to is his, Brown’s and Blair’s New Labour project of running capitalism better than the capitalists, which he sees is in mortal danger if some semblance of party unity is not restored soon.
That’s what brought him back from Brussels and that’s why he is straining every sinew to help his old fellow New Labour architect. The fact that they personally loathe each other is something both of them can put up with.
Brown’s re-shuffle also had a populist flourish with his friend and TV star Sir Alan Sugar, soon to be Lord Sugar, agreeing to become Enterprise Tsar. On the same day as he announced his re-shuffle, Brown warned off his enemies by vowing in Mandelsonian langauge, “I will not waver. I will not walk away. I will get on with the job and finish the work.” Fighting talk!
New Labour's death throes
Those Cabinet Ministers who resigned or ‘retired’ were targets in the Telegraph’s allegations of dodgy MPs expenses. Hazel ‘flipping’ Blears and James ‘capital gains’ Purnell could well be facing their own troubles at their constituency courts of public enquiry. Such local public outcries forced Tory MPs Andrew Mackay and Julie Kirkbride to quit, and may yet result in the premature end to the former Labour Cabinet Ministers’ parliamentary careers.
Perhaps Blears and Purnell know what’s ahead of them and chose to attack Brown in the way that they did because they know they had nothing to lose.
For Labour MPs more generally, on the principle that turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, most won’t relish the prospect of an early General Election and will be hoping that Gordon “the best Labour Chancellor ever” can pull some rabbits out of his hat and get the British economy moving again in time for the General Election next year.
For their part, the British ruling class may have to content themselves with waiting a little while longer for that election, safe in the knowledge that they have severely damaged the man who will most likely lead Labour into that election. Unless something miraculous can turn round Gordon Brown’s and Labour’s fortunes, an election will give the Tories the parliamentary power they so desperately desire.
But in launching their assault on Britain’s Parliamentary system, the ruling class’ High Command and the Daily Telegraph took two big risks.
First was that too many ‘friendly casualties’ (Tory MPs) could seriously damage their own party and its fighting spirit and morale.
That risk was always worth taking as long as the Tories remained far enough ahead of Labour to win a General Election. Once back in power, party strength and morale could be restored. Nothing succeeds like success. The 4th June election results have justified the taking of that risk.
The second was that they might fundamentally damage the very parliamentary system that has served them well for hundreds of years.
The “revolutionary” rhetoric of the main party leaders - all wearing their obligatory hair shirts - is replete with pledges of fundamental change of a corrupt parliamentary system.
But actions speak louder than words and all that we do know is that there is a new Speaker of the House of Commons and that MPs’ allowances will now be the responsibility of an outside agency. Hardly a revolution, and hardly anything for Britains ruling class to worry unduly about. If that’s all that comes about, big risk number two will also have been well worth taking.
Tory leader David Cameron has talked about transferring power from “the political elite to the man and woman in the street” but everyone knows he doesn’t mean a word of it.
His continued demand for a General Election while he’s ahead in the polls and his steadfast refusal to contemplate any form of proportional representation - that might produce a Lab-Lib government for years to come - prove that he and his masters are interested in one thing only: winning an election and re-gaining parliamentary and legislative power.
As the present “Brown must go now” crisis inevitably recedes, the greater political crisis which the Daily Telegraph’s revelations has provoked will come to the fore again.
Brown’s and Cameron’s handling of this could still seriously affect their personal and their party’s fortunes.
Although much has been revealed, it seems clear the expenses scandals and the crisis they’ve caused have still to run their full course. Such is the public mood that full disclosure of everything that our MPs have been up to is the minimum that will be demanded.
In the pubs and clubs and up and down the high streets of Britain, ordinary people are angry and incredulous and demanding to know- what have our MP been up to? Those MPs who have admitted to inappropriate behaviours are jeered and taunted with cries of, “cheat” and “resign.” Even those who are as squeaky clean as it’s possible to be within a corrupt system, get tarred with the same brush as their guilty colleagues.
Each day brings new and more shocking revelations and in its wake new suspensions, resignations or “retirals” as the Parliamentary rats desert their ship like never before.
Never in this correspondent’s memory has the currency of all politicians been so debased.
But even more fundamental than all of the scandals of corrupt MPs is the year long financial and economic crisis that Britain and the rest of the world is suffering from. Just a few months ago it was Britain 's bankers and the whole financial system that were being vilified for the financial and mortgage crisis which has led, among other things, to 2.2 million people being unemployed. Now it’s Britain’s MPs in the dock of public scrutiny.
Our eyes have been off the banking crisis ball for sometime: the fact is that Britain ’s downward spiral from a banking, financial and economic crisis to a crisis of the whole political and economic system has been as quick as it is profound.
The 4th June results show that if a General Election was called tomorrow, Labour would be out and the Tories would be back in after an absence of 12 years.
Britain’s 4th June European Parliament election results which were announced on 7th June, hit record lows for all sorts of reasons but most of all for the Labour Party. In a record low turnout in Britain of 34.8%, compared to the EU-wide record low turnout of 43%, Labour for the first time in any UK election in Wales lost first place to the Conservatives. That’s over 100 years.
Labour’s humiliation was not just confined to Wales, it was UK-wide; coming third, with a calamitous 16% share of the vote, behind the Conservatives on 28.% and the UK Independence Party in second place with 17%.
Undoubtedly the lowest point of all was the double success for the British National Party in Yorkshire and Humberside and in the North-West of England, where party leader Nick Griffin was elected - the first time the BNP has won seats in a national election.
In Scotland , the rise and rise of Scottish nationalism continues with the Scottish National Party, for the second time in succession, topping a country-wide poll ahead of Labour. The last occasion was the Scottish Parliament elections in May 2007. These dreadful EU results for Labour followed the equally dreadful local government election results, also held on 4th June, in England where again Labour suffered badly losing 291 seats with the Tories gaining 244.
These results are no accident and are a result of the New Labour Party’s failure of trying to run capiitalism better than the capitalists: this is nothing new as far as the Labour Party is concerned but its apotheosis was Brown’s, Mandelson’s and Blair’s New Labour Party.
This electoral disaster represents New Labour in its death throes. Labour’s leader and the country’s Prime Minister may have changed in June 2007 but the New Labour strategy and policies have not.
On 4th June millions of Labour voters, unable to vote for the Tories or anyone else, stayed at home. That explains the record low turnout and why, in terms of the numbers of votes they won, other parties did not do so well either.
The big issue
Like wars, political and economic crises can be unpredictable but one thing is very clear. Britain’s capitalist ruling class are determined that they should not shoulder the cost of resolving this current and deep crisis: that’s why they want the Tories back.
In whose interests this general crisis of capitalism will be resolved is the big and urgent issue facing the British people and especially the British Labour and trade union movement. Get that wrong and we could be facing another 18 years of Tory rule.
This article was first published in The Socialist Correspondent.