Talking to the New Labour think tank Progress Tony Blair argued that Labour should make the economy its priority: “I still think we need to focus a lot on the micro side: targeted policies that support business, jobs, that allow that large amount of cumulative reserves in business to be invested and that also gives us an opportunity to regain, which I think is very important to us, our relationship with business.”
The recognition that, at a time (at least in the UK) of continuing recession, business sits upon a ‘large amount of cumulative reserves’ is not new, but the idea that government needs to bring about detailed measures that will ‘allow’ business to invest those reserves, that our present structures and arrangements do not provide the opportunities for such private business investment, is something that might find common ground with our coalition government’s programme of reshaping, and shrinking, the state.
As Tony Blair says, “In the real world of the 21st century there will be some pick and mix of policy. Sometimes it will be less left v right than right v wrong. Above all today, efficacy – effective delivery…”
It always seemed to me that Tony Blair would see no essential difference between governing the country and managing Tesco. For New Labour to command the brand loyalty of Tesco might seem his ideal – and political loyalty cards might not be a bad idea either. Yet I believe much harm has been done by the now almost universal political lip service to the ‘middle ground’, that territorial discovery of Tony Blair’s, who then set about the ruthless extirpation of its aboriginal inhabitants. There needs to be a recognition that a society, and its organisation, does inevitably contain conflicting interests and that it is the task of government to construct a recognised and broadly acceptable balance of those interests.
Instead we now have the pretence that all our interests coincide, that ‘we are all in this together’, and that any discussion of competing claims or modes of organisation is mere residual tribalism interfering with ‘effective delivery’. So bring on ‘reform’ of public services (“motivated of course by values” as Tony Blair quickly parenthesises). Along with this goes an anodyne invocation of ‘fairness’ as the ultimate arbiter of all political choices, as if every measure were somehow vaguely and morally unquestionable. Even corporation tax rates can be set by ‘fairness’: we must be fair to consumers, tax-payers, businesses – to anyone or anything you care to mention.
Just like Tesco, fair to suppliers (don’t they want to sell?), and fair to customers (don’t they want to buy?). Or like News Corporation, so sure of what the public wants; so sure of its mission to construct the new society, safe from hypocrites and perverts.
Given that the News Corporation interest is primarily in making money rather than in nurturing the continuing health of its particular newspaper imprints, one wonders how those in command could have been so stupid as to imagine that they could continue to get away with, not just the scale of illegality at one or more of its papers, but with its sheer nastiness. How could they think that they could go on indefinitely blankly facing down every new revelation? The answer probably lies in the arrogance born of power (it conforms to a type seen presently in several areas of international politicking). Such arrogance was bolstered by the cravenness of our politicians who believed that the popular press could deliver that hallowed (and hollow) ‘middle ground’ to them. Did not those papers demonstrate, day after day, how firmly they had their thumbs on the popular pulse? Efficacy, thy name is Murdoch.
