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The Great Moving Nowhere Show

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The Great Moving Nowhere Show assessed. Without a strategic framework, the 'concrete proposals' could be brilliant; or they could just be off-the-wall - com­ pletely batty. In recent months. Demos has The Great Moving offered us plenty of both kinds. In fact, seen in the context of New Labour's sustained hype and vaunting ambition over the past 18 months, Mul­ gan's idea that nothing requires serious attention apart from pragmatic effective­ Nowhere Show ness is not only wrong but curiously 'off- message' and wholly out of synch with His Tony Blair has talked much about 'the project'. Master's Voice. It was clear from the outset that Mr Blair saw himself in the Thatch­ But what precisely is it? Stripped of the hyperbole, erite mould and he has worked hard to the continuities with Thatcherism are all too obvious. model himself on her style of leadership. And with some success! Recent polls sug­ Stuart Hall examines a great missed opportunity gest the electorate is impressed with 'what they regard as the strong Thatcherite style', though they also seem unsure whether this is more than 'better gloss, more PR and spin' and, more worryingly, they doubt that hat is the political charac­ the sociological trends on to the political New Labour 'will make a real difference ter of the Blair regime? Is screen. She never supposed Thatcherite sub­ and force a clean policy break with the Tory New Labour a radically jects were already out there, fully formed, years' (The Guardian, September 28 1998). new response to the core requiring only to be focus-grouped into Mr Blair has also modelled his ambitions Wpolitical issues of our time? Is its perspec­ position. Instead, she set out to produce to make everything in Britain 'New' on tive as broad in sweep, modern in outlook new political subjects - Entrepreneurial Thatchcrism's project of national self- and coherent as Thatcherism's neo-liberal Man - out of the mix of altruism and com­ renewal. Consequently, these days, no New project, only different - because it is break­ petitiveness of which ordinary mortals are Labour spokesperson opens his/her mouth, ing decisively with the legacy and logic of composed. Above all she knew that, to nor journalist reports the event, without the Thatcher years? Or is it a series of prag­ achieve radical change, politics must be reference to 'the Blair project'. It is New matic adjustments and adaptive moves to conducted like a war of position between Labour, not the intellectuals, who put this essentially Thatcherite terrain? Since tak­ adversaries. She clearly identified her ene­ 'meta-political' question on the agenda. It ing office, New Labour has certainly been mies, remorselessly dividing the political is Blair who talks of New Labour in apoca­ hyperactive, setting policy reviews in place field: Wets v Drys. Us v Them, those who lyptic terms - 'one of the great, radical, here, legislating and innovating there. A are 'with us' v 'the enemy within'. reforming governments of our history', 'to be nothing less than the model twenty-first careful audit of the achievements and fail­ When Marxism Today first began to dis­ ures of these early years remains to be century nation, a beacon to the world", cuss Thalcherism as a 'project', smarl-arsed 'becoming the natural party of govern­ made. But that is for a different occasion. journalists and Labour analysts joined Here, we want to stay with "the big picture'. ment'. ("Natural parties of government' are forces to pour scorn on the idea - a thought those whose ideas lead on all fronts, carry­ Where is New Labour really going? Does altogether too concerted and 'continental' Mr Blair have a political project? ing authority in every domain of life; whose for the empiricist temper of British political philosophy of change has become the com­ Thatcherism, from which Mr Blair has culture. Geoff Mulgan - Director of mon sense of the age. In the old days we learned so much, certainly did have a pro­ Demos, former MT contributor and now in used to call them 'hegemonic'.) Mr Blair is ject. Its aim was to transform the political the Number 10 Policy Unit - advances a definitely into 'the vision thing'. landscape, irrevocably: to make us think in similar view elsewhere in this issue. 'Mela- and speak its language as if there were no political' questions, he says, are irrelevant - ew Labour's latest bid to give other. It had a strategy - an idea of where it a sign that the left intellectuals who ask 'this vision thing' historic cred­ wanted to get to and how to get there. Mrs them are hopelessly isolated from the 'real' ibility and so to capture and Thatcher had no fondness for intellectuals: business of government. They would be define 'the big picture' is the the word 'ideas' did not trip lightly off her better employed, like Demos, thinking up 'Third Way'. This comes in several shapes tongue. Nevertheless, everything she did concrete proposals which New Labour and sizes. There is the intellectual's version was animated by a social 'philosophy'. could put into effect. of the 'Third Way' offered by Anthony From a reductive reading of Adam Smith, Guilty British academics on the left are Giddens. Mr Blair's most influential intel­ she learned to see individuals as exclusive­ particularly vulnerable to this kind of gross lectual, which sketches out a number of sig­ ly economic agents. From Hayek, she anti-intellectualism. However, Mulgan's nificantly novel sociological shifts which learned that the social good is impossible to position seems disingenuous. Of course, seem to have major political consequences. define and that to try to harness markets to policy innovation is essential to any politi­ Many of these one would be happy to agree social objectives led down a one-way slip­ cal strategy - that is why Martin Jacques with or to debate further. After all, eco­ pery slope to the nanny state, misguided dreamed up the idea of Demos in the first nomic globalisation is a reality and has social engineering, welfare dependence and place. There is lots of room for lateral transformed the space of operations and moral degeneration - 'There is No Such thinking. But - Mr Blair's Rendezvous the 'reach' of nation states and national Thing As Societv'. From the Monetarists With Destiny notwithstanding- May 1997 economies. There is a new individualism she learned market fundamentalism: mar­ was not the start of 'Year Zero'. All ques­ abroad, due to the growing social complex­ kets are 'good' and work mysteriously to tions of perspective and strategy have not ity and diversity of modern life, which has the benefit of all; they are self-instituting been 'solved'. As Decca Aitkenhead put it undermined much of the old collectivism and self-regulating entities; market ratio­ recently, the Blairites sometimes behave as and the political programmes it under­ nality is the only valid mode of social cal­ if 'Number 10 is sorted for nuts and bolts; pinned. Many problems do present new culation, 'market forces must prevail!' it's just not sure what sort of machine they challenges or assume new forms not well What is more, she armed herself with a add up to". In fact, it's impossible to know covered by the old political ideologies. We decisive analysis of the points of historical how radical and innovative a concrete pro­ do need to broker a new relationship change which had created the opening to posal is until you know which strategy it is between markets and the public good, the Thatcherism. But she did not, like some attempting to put in place and the criteria individual and the community. These versions of the 'Third Way', simply project against which its 'radicalism' is being sociological shifts are part of the great 9 MARXISM TODAY NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1998 'Third Way' speaks as if there are no longer any conflicting interests which cannot be reconciled. It therefore envisages a 'politics without adversaries'. This suggests that, by some miracle of transcendence, the inter­ ests represented by, say, the ban on tobac­ co advertising and 'Formula One', the private car lobby and John Prescott's White Paper, an ethical foreign policy and the sale of arms to Indonesia, media diversity and the concentrated drive-to-global-power of Rupert Murdoch's media empire have been effortlessly 'harmonised' on a Higher Plane, above politics. Whereas, it needs to be clearly said that a project to transform and modernise society in a radical direc­ tion, which does not disturb any existing interests and has no enemies, is not a seri­ ous political enterprise. he 'Third Way' is hot on the responsibilities of individuals, but those of business are passed over with a slippery evasiveness. T'Companies,' Tony Blair argues in his Fabian pamphlet The Third Way, 'will devise ways to share with their staff the wealth their know-how creates.' Will they? The 'Third Way' does observe accelerating social inequality but refuses to acknowl­ edge that there might be structural interests preventing our achieving a more equitable distribution of wealth and life-chances. As Ross McKibbin recently remarked, although most people 'do believe that soci­ historical rupture - the onset of late-late- also to have transcended them - to be ety should be based on some notion of fair­ 'The Third ness', they also believe 'that the rich and modernity - which Thatcherism first mas­ Way speaks 'beyond Right and Left'. These shifting for­ tered politically but certainly did not origi­ mulations are not quite what one would call powerful can only be made to acknowledge nate or set in motion. This is where as if there a project with a clear political profile.
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