-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- >From IntellectualCapital.Com "" 4/6/00 10:34:25 PM bill from buckhead Tony Blair has been a inspiration to progressives worldwide. Thanks for the help with Smith and Wesson! "" {{<Begin>}} Tony Blair's Downing Street Blues by Martin Walker Thursday, April 06, 2000 Comments: 13 posts LONDON -- After spending most of the last two decades well behind both France and Italy in the global pecking order, Britain is resurgent. Its economy has far outdistanced Italy and this month surged past the French to become the fourth largest in the world after the United States, Japan and Germany. Unemployment -- at just over 4% -- is now lower than in Japan, and personal incomes have risen almost 10% since Prime Minister Tony Blair took over the Labor party. Spinning out of control So why is the Blair government currently in the doldrums, beset by the perception that everything is going wrong at once? The prospect of a new wave of unemployment, after Germany’s BMW announced that it was writing off its $5- billion loss in the floundering Rover auto manufacturer, is one factor. Ford’s rumored plans to close its vast British plant in Dageham, and Honda’s to slash UK production by half, are others. The overpriced pound sterling is hurting manufacturing exports, and planned new taxes on multinational corporations add to the gloom. This is undermining Blair’s proudest boast, that Labor had shed its old socialist instincts to become the most pro-market and pro-enterprise system in Europe. His clever finance minister, Gordon Brown, boasts that the basic rates of income and corporate tax have dropped steadily under Labor. But indirect taxes on gas, house purchase and consumption have risen so fast that the government now takes a net 1% of gross domestic product more out of the economy in taxes than it did at the time Blair was elected. Long unheard, the opposition attacks on these “stealth taxes” are starting to sting Blair's government. Most of Blair's reforms have run into trouble Furthermore, most of the Blair government’s big reforms have run into trouble. Devolution of power to Scotland and Wales makes strategic sense. So does increased local government control. Tactically, however, there are problems. Blair’s hand-picked leader for Wales has had to resign, not daring to face a vote of confidence in the new Welsh Assembly. A cheeky and popular left-wing rebel, Ken Livingstone, looks set to trounce Blair’s own candidate to be elected the first mayor of London next month, despite extraordinary efforts by Downing Street to block him. The real worry is in Scotland, where a parliamentary by-election in Ayr saw Labor knocked into third place, behind the Tories and Scottish Nationalists. Labor’s core traditional working-class voters simply did not go to the polls. Optimists within the Labor Party say this is the usual mid-term apathy. Pessimists say that Blair’s grand strategy to reshape Labor into a coalition party of the left and center, embracing the middle classes of what was once Margaret Thatcher’s Middle England, has eroded the loyalty of the party's traditional supporters. If they continue to stay home, then Blair may have to step briskly to the left before the next election. Has Blair's luck run out? Adding to the prime minister's problems is his unsuccessful plan to ditch the feudal legacy of the unelected second chamber of parliament, the House of Lords. The problem is how to replace it. Unwilling to compromise the authority of the House of Commons by allowing an elected U.S.-style Senate, Blair is replacing the old aristocrats with loyalists and fund-raisers appointed by the government and other political parties. This is becoming even more controversial than the old system, which at least had the merit of familiarity. Moreover, Blair’s election promises are looking thin. Hospital waiting lists for operations under the National Health Service have lengthened, rather than been cut, after a winter flu epidemic sideswiped reform plans. School reform is foundering on the entrenched suspicion of the teachers’ unions. A promised tightening of the asylum rules has been made more difficult by waves of refugees from Kosovo and the Balkans. Blair’s government seems to be running out of luck. Its consistent and principled attempt to bring a lasting peace to Northern Ireland has sunk into the same old trouble. The Protestant majority is unwilling to opt into a power- sharing government with Gerry Adams and other leaders from Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), until the IRA accepts that the war is over and starts handing in its weapons and explosives. The power- sharing government has been suspended, and after all the risks he took for peace the moderate Protestant leader David Trimble is left with only his shared Nobel Peace Prize to console him. Help from within Given the woeful state of the opposition Conservative Party, Blair has no immediate cause to worry, even though his poll ratings are dipping down to 50% and even below. He admits to being tired and over-worked, but yet seems so frayed by his internal party rivals that he may not take the paternity leave to which he is entitled when his fourth child is born this summer. Initially a surprise to Blair and Cherrie, his superlawyer wife, the new baby may prove a political boost for the prime minister. A Britain growing distinctly cynical of Blair’s bold promises of a modernized "cool Britannia" may melt into a collective “aaah” for the first Downing Street baby in living memory. Martin Walker, former U.S. and European editor of The Guardian, is a public policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson center for International Scholars in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor of IntellectualCapital.com. E-mail him at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Related Links Visit the Labour Party homepage. Read more about Blair’s upcoming decision to take a paternity leave. ABC News offers a biography of Tony Blair. The eurostat publishes valuable statistical information on the EU. Read policy initiatives concerning Blair and the economy. Will there be any lasting consequences of Blair's decreased popularity? Is it deserved? How would you assess his time in office? Below are the last ten comments in chronological order. Click here to view the full comment history. [Post your comments] [View all comments] 4/6/00 6:20:07 PM The Necromancer [EMAIL PROTECTED] I for one certainly hope Blair gets sacked - he's the guy responsible for the cameras with facial recognition technology linked to them popping up all over the place over there - a literally Big Brother system. For that reason alone I fervently hope he is deposed as soon as possible. 4/6/00 6:48:44 PM Chris Anti-gun happens to be very popular "over here" and I for one am glad I don’t live in a society where guns are common. The other references to him being anti- freedom are off the wall. And there has never been much violent revolution in Britain; its history is the story of continuous but gradual evolution, not revolution. I hardly think that the most popular Prime Minister this country has ever had is going to be “deposed”, any time soon. He’s got the next election in the bag already. Americans are paranoid about government, the British aren’t, we certainly don’t need guns and we’ve an extremely free society, so lets have less of the BS. 4/6/00 10:34:25 PM bill from buckhead Tony Blair has been a inspiration to progressives worldwide. Thanks for the help with Smith and Wesson! 4/7/00 12:37:04 AM CA Chris, did you forget about Cromwell? Or was that revolution so long ago that you don't include it in your recounting of English history? 4/7/00 12:41:51 AM CA Chris, per your mention of "labour" being mispelled as "labor," I've noticed the Ministry of Defence is somtimes written as the Ministry of Defense here, and the Department of Defense is sometimes written as the Department of Defence there, but not as often, and the slightly amusing thing is the instance of sentences in the BBC such as "Both the Department of Defense and the Ministry of Defence deny that DU poses any significant health risks." 4/7/00 3:35:04 AM Rodvik Good gawd a couple of posts into a thread about the british Primeminister and guns comes up? Thats a complete non issue in Britian and certainly wouldnt have anything to do with Blairs downfall. If US people want to keep guns legal then fine thats their choice, but please dont lecture other countries that they are "less free" because they dont want to be guns legal. Getting back to the story Tony Blair is vulnerable as he is a moderately nice (and honest) chap who is blessed with an incompetent opposition. If the conservatives ever got thier act together again Mr Blair's popularity would tumble fairly quickly. 4/7/00 3:39:15 AM Rodvik CA: Re: Cromwell, he said not "much" violent revolution. And it could be argued that the English civil war was more a rebalancing of the interests of various nobles rather than any kind of desire for overthrowing the monarchy (they just didnt like this particular king). That said you are right that it was a fairly nasty business. As for the spelling of the Labour Party I could care less. IC can spell it anyway they like, we are English not French, we shouldnt be so touchy about language :) 4/7/00 1:42:59 PM Chris CA: The British almost always use 'defense' when referring to the Department of Defense and defence at other times. I can't say I recall ever seeing Department of Defence, though that proves nothing. I've seen Ministry of Defense dozens of times though. /// Re English Civil War, the war established Parliament as the government of England, though the King was still very powerful after the restoration. What follows is that 350-year period of gradual but constant PEACEFUL evolution. In fact parliament had been gaining power since it's inception in the 12th century. Britain continues to change as exemplified by devolved power to Scotland. 4/7/00 4:13:31 PM CA Chris, from all that I've gathered, your assessment of English history sounds right, and with the House of Lords losing their status as legilators and becoming something of an advisory body, England is making strides towa rd greater democracy, if I got the story straight. On the matter of defense/defence observations, I'm guessing this subtly reflects a bit more ignorance and/or arrogance on the part of US writers and editors than in their counterparts in England. Same with Labor/Labour. 4/7/00 5:56:38 PM Ken Norlie [EMAIL PROTECTED] Gun control is easy in a decadent country like England. In America most people don't support gun confiscation, and if any government tried it they would get their asses handed to them. 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