New Labour have forgotten about the people
by John Reynolds
March 13, 2002
'We are now today the people's party, the party of all the people, the many not the few.' So said Prime Minister Tony Blair on the day he took office in 1997. This contrasts somewhat with what trade secretary Patricia Hewitt said on 27 February: 'Business will stay at the heart of our government.'
Blair has forgotten about serving the people. His 'third way' vision for a new Britain seems to place great emphasis on courting, serving and promoting the interests of big business.
This is the real answer to backbench Labour MP Tony McWalter's question during Prime Minister's Question Time on the same day in February. Mr McWalter made a nuisance of himself to the grinning Blair and asked for: 'a brief characterisation of the political philosophy which he espouses and which underlies his policies.' A speechless Blair composed himself for a moment or two and then said that the NHS was an example of his political philosophy.
In reality, there is a philosophy that has been central from the infancy of the new Labour project. It has remained so from when it was first discussed among the clique of Blair, Chancellor Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson, the disgraced former Northern Ireland minister, right up until the present day.
Old Labour was seen as being dominated by the trade unions and their dogma. So once in office, Blair threw open the doors of Number 10 and invited business leaders in, telling one of them that he enjoyed such entrepreneurial company because 'you make things happen'. The people to whom he said the Labour Party belonged have been forgotten about, cast to the back of his power-drunken mind. In their place are the Murdochs, the oilmen and other big business chiefs, all of whom now wield considerable power and influence in the corridors of power.
Lord Haskins, owner of Northern Foods, works at the heart of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. BP chairman David Simon was given the post of Minister for European Trade in the early days of new Labour. The present BP chairman, Lord Browne, was given a peerage and yet has never bothered setting foot in the House of Lords. Supermarket baron David Sainsbury was also made a Lord and given the post of Minister for Science in the Department of Trade and Industry. More recently he donated £2 million to Labour coffers.
Recent news has highlighted the hypocrisy with which the government acts. On one hand it aids the interests of Lakshmi Mittal's steel company interests in Romania, a company that has less then one per cent of its workforce in this country, and whose interests actually damage British industry. On the other hand, Blair and his new Labour cult insist that any apparent cosiness between big business and Number 10 is in the interests of British industry and jobs, while still retaining close links to the trade unions whose members donate hundreds of thousands of pounds each year.
And yet Blair would have us believe, as he told John Humphrys on the BBC's On the Record following the Bernie Ecclestone scandal that: 'I would never do anything to harm the country or anything improper. I never haveŠI am a pretty straight sort of guy.'
Despite the best efforts of Alastair Campbell, all the spin doctoring in the world cannot mask the fact that Blair's complete lack of ideology or moral substance implies that he sees no problem with his government's and the whole establishment's intimacy with corporations who do not serve 'the people', but whose legal obligation is to serve their shareholders. Whitehall task forces, committees, commissions and lobby groups are full of unelected directors, chairmen, executives, Sirs and Lords all championing the interests of their respective companies.
For instance, consider the chairman of the government's Advisory Committee on Business and the Environment. Were it someone whose company had respected and honourable environmental credentials, we the public would assume that Labour were, true to its supposed cause, serving the best interests of the people. Sorry to disappoint you and reinforce your cynicism about politics, but the chairman in question is Chris Fay, an ex-chairman and chief executive of Shell UK, former executive of the British Airports Authority (BAA) and president of the UK Offshore Operators' Association.
Shell reported £9 billion in profits last year and has a questionable record on human rights and a shameful environmental record. BAA successfully defeated local residents and environmental campaigners who opposed the building of new airport runways in Manchester and, most recently, Heathrow's Terminal Five. And the UK Offshore Operators' Association is an oil industry lobby group which has successfully resisted attempts to tax oil profits and fiercely opposed attempts to introduce new environmental regulations.
Quite how Mr Fay can advise the government on how business should be environmentally friendly or responsible is anybody's guess. Considering his extensive links to businesses which contribute to global warming, blight the lives of those living near airports, churn out toxic fumes and destroy our environment, appointing Mr Fay to such a role was not in the best interests of serving the people.
Doubtless Number 10 or the DTI would try and deceive us, saying something like: 'close links to industry is in the interests of better regulation.' It is, of course, better regulation - for corporate interests, not the public interest.
What the public wants is for the government to protect the environment, employment conditions and health, even if that conflicts with the interests of multinational companies. Ninety per cent said so in a MORI poll last October. It is clear that new Labour wants the opposite - to protect business interests, even if they conflict with the public interest and that of protecting the environment, health and employment conditions.
Like so many other pledges Labour made during the 1997 election campaign, it is clear that placing 'the environment at the heart of all policy' and being 'this country's first truly green government' were empty promises.
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