There’s an election today that is infinitely important. It
will be an ideological litmus test. The winners will embark on a
career that will change the conditions of the people who voted them
in. That election is for the Undergraduate Students Association
Council, which today leisurely saunters into its final lap.
On the other side of the pond there is another democratic ritual
being played out. Sadly, it can’t boast any of the civilized
ideals of the USAC campaign. Today the British general election
will come to its frantic climax and ““ according to everyone
in the know ““ the insentient British people will unthinkingly
place Tony Blair and his New Labour party in the hot-seat for a
third time.
Unlike the USAC election, no one in Britain over the past month
has caught a sniff of nostalgic words like “ideology”
or atrophied concepts like “changing conditions.”
Instead the British public have been hit with a public relations
glitz-fest. This fastidiously orchestrated extravaganza, run by the
soulless politician-media nexus, has had commentators right, left
and center lamenting the demise of British democracy.
And the depressing disembowelment of British politics finds its
cause in that increasingly lonely soul, Tony Blair. Having learned
a great deal from the victory of Bill Clinton and the “New
Democrats” in 1992 and 1996, Blair and his close circle of
astute propagandists purposefully turned “the British
left” into a saleable product. And as every multinational
corporation in the world knows, the product is rather irrelevant:
It’s the brand that is key.
And Blair has done some ingenious branding. He has conned
liberal America into thinking he is a progressive force and because
of that he has an almost pious following here. Take Thomas
Friedman, the liberal superstar columnist at The New York Times,
who wrote fawningly in that newspaper last week, “I believe
that history will rank Blair as one of the most important British
prime ministers ever, both for what he has accomplished at home and
for what he has dared to do abroad.”
On the other end of the spectrum, there’s a whole team of
conservative cheerleaders, from Dick Cheney to Bill O’Reilly,
for their cute little British foil.
So sorry about being the one to shatter illusions, but the
United States has a right to know what Blair really stands for when
they read about his victory tomorrow morning.
So let’s look at what, in Friedman’s words,
“Blair has accomplished at home.” He has succeeded in
managing to run a nominally center-left government for eight years
without changing the tax system he inherited from the monetarist
guru Margaret Thatcher ““ a system which gives the rich the
easiest ride in Western Europe. He has crammed more people into
British prisons than any conservative party ever managed. He has
started the incremental privatization of the National Health
Service which has traditionally provided free health care to
British people based on need, not ability to pay.
According to the Guardian and the British Broadcasting
Corporation, he has made it near impossible for lower-middle class
kids to go to a university by charging fees for the first time. He
has, with no shame, ingratiated himself with millionaires and
billionaires and taken money from them in exchange for favors
““ most brazenly Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One boss. He
has embarked on the most disgusting campaign against immigrants
Britain has seen since the jingoism of World War II, passing a bill
in 1999 that made it impossible for a refugee to legally flee from
Slobodan Milosevic or any other psychotic goon. The list goes on
and on. Should any liberal call these
“accomplishments”?
And then we go on to what he has heroically “dared to do
abroad.” Of course, there is the support for the Bush
administration’s wars, which is an exhausted subject in
Britain and is the topic most likely to slash the Labour majority
in parliament. No prime minister in modern history has taken
Britain into as many wars as Tony Blair. In his eight years in
office he has bombed Serbia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and
Iraq in both Operation Desert Fox and the second Gulf War. These
acts have been supplemented by the sale of arms to the genocidal
leadership of Indonesia and a host of other fetid regimes. Just how
“daring” are these immoral policies that are engineered
to keep his buddies in Washington, and the arms industry,
happy?
So when you are mulling over the richly diverse choices for the
USAC elections, spare a little thought for the British people who
have no such luxury. Today most progressives in Britain will
probably vote for the anti-war Liberal Democrats who, by an ironic
twist of history, actually split from the Labour party in the 1980s
because they were too left-wing. And in the jockeying for position,
the Conservatives have only managed to jog around Blair’s
right flank this time by rewinding about 60 years and laying into
gypsies, immigrants and any other easily derided minority they feel
can boost their vote, according to BBC.
This ideological musical chairs has been happening around Blair
his entire time in office. He has stayed seated ““ in fact,
bolted ““ to the center-right. Unfortunately, his refusal to
budge doesn’t mean he’ll lose the game.
Kennard is a third-year history student. E-mail him at
mkennard@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to
viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.