At 03/05/02 08:52 -0400, you wrote: >On Fri, 03 May 2002 08:06:12 +0100, Chris Burford wrote: > >Despite the expectation of losing votes badly > >compared to their high point of the general > >election, Labour Party losses were modest. In > >what should be a good time for them, there are > >no signs that the Conservative Party is in a > >position to defeat Labour at the next general > >election in roughly 4 years time. > >Again, we are dealing with the same problem. Tony Blair creates a >climate in which the ultraright can flourish. By catering to big >business through deregulation/privatization, he polarizes British >society. With growing unemployment, some backward sections of the >country will find reasons to blame immigrants.
Although our two different perspective on marxism are bitterly counterposed, I agree with Louis Proyect there is a problem here. New Labour has been an extemely efficient executive committee of the bourgeoisie, while diffusing open areas of restance. This has left a vacuum in which working people see no champion for their interests. (But as Marxism Today endlessly analysed in the 1980's the chances of a majority of the population identifying themselves as working class were receding hopelessly.) The irony of these interesting local election results is that the Conservatives are no where near overthrowing Labour's dominance of the political agenda but that everywhere Labour is vulnerable to various different protest votes. New Labour is so systematically opportunist that before the election Balir deliberately said something harsh about making poor parents suffer if their children break the law, by taking benefits away from them. That was for the focus groups. They have raised opportunism to a science. The Home Secretary Blunkett deliberately referred to a feeling in some white areas that they are being "swamped" by immigrants: that was to provide a home for those attitudes. These remarks have come in for a lot of criticism within the Labour party. It is not true however that unemployment has been growing. Labour's management of finance capitalism has been extemely successful at a technical level, and Britain has got through the last 18 months with hardly a hint of a recession. Part of their aggressive employment policies has been through the US style policy of promoting cheap jobs. Chris Burford
