cDIREoCTIONmFOR THE pass DEMOCRATIC LEFT Breaking out of Britain’s Neo-Liberal State January 2009 Gerry Hassan and Anthony Barnett 3 4 r Tr hink e b m m u N PIECES 3 4 Tr hink e b m u N PIECES Breaking out of Britain’s Neo-Liberal State Gerry Hassan and Anthony Barnett “In the big-dipper of UK politics, the financial crisis suddenly re-reversed these terms. Gordon Brown excavated a belief in Keynesian solutions from his social democratic past and a solidity of purpose that was lacking from Blair’s lightness of being” Compass publications are intended to create real debate and discussion around the key issues facing the democratic left - however the views expressed in this publication are not a statement of Compass policy. Breaking out of Britain’s Neo-Liberal State www.compassonline.org.uk PAGE 1 Breaking out of Britain’s reduced for so many, is under threat with The British Empire State Building Neo-Liberal State no state provisions in place for them. The political and even military consequences England’s “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 Gerry Hassan and Anthony Barnett could well be dire. created a framework of compromise between monarchy and Parliament. It was Nonetheless we should celebrate the followed by the union of England with possible defeat of one aspect of neo- Scotland of 1707, which joined two he world we have lived in, liberal domination. It cheered the different countries while preserving their created from the twin oil-price destruction of a communist world that distinct legal traditions. Since then the T shockwaves of 1973 and 1979 was oppressive and unfree. The freedom it narrative of British history has been the and validated in the eyes of many by the offered in its place, however, had its own adaptability and flexibility of its political events of 1989, is at last suffering its own form of authoritarianism. You can’t buck system. This provided a framework for the crash. The era of Thatcher and Reagan, the market, we were told. We had to be evolution of democracy without rupture inflated by their offspring Clinton, Bush fatalistic and grateful and our standard of or revolt at home, allowing the middle and Blair; the era of unfettered financial living would grow. Forces more powerful classes and then the working classes to be capitalism, unrestrained consumerism and and wise than you and I had already incorporated relatively peacefully into it, (1) a near mystical belief in the power of determined “the official future” . There markets; the neo-liberal epoch of was no alternative. corporate conceit and neo-con “Public discourse adventurism, is drawing to a close. The toxic mix of popular powerlessness, has to be market inevitability and the glorification of reclaimed from Despite the pain, the horrible losses to leadership vindicated by the ever-rising the neo-liberals, come, and the disturbing spectacle of a value of property, was pioneered in Britain whether first wave, by Margaret Thatcher and deepened by left that had proved unable to oppose the second beast in any effective way or prepare for Tony Blair. Here indeed, it is sad to report, wave,instrumental, personal or its downfall now preening itself that it Britain “led the world” - in the direction of knew better all along, this is a time to uncritical subordination to Washington unwittingly. Government and celebrate as well as tremble. It’s good that DC. In the process, the United Kingdom public agencies need to we can now once again pose the became - perhaps more than anywhere fundamentally rethink how they questions about how we organise our outside some city-states and micro-nations conceive and think of policy, the - a neo-liberal state. economies and societies without being language and values in scorned or ignored. This essay is offered, therefore, at a documents, and whose voice At the same time the decades of talk moment of hope as well as danger. It and interest such processes are about “globalisation” are now been seeks to sketch roughly how the UK came serving” revealed as a panglossian deception. A to be a neo-liberal Kingdom and address boondoggle of vast fortunes was some of the issues posed for UK politics, unleashed, justified because benefits would while hoping they have a wider relevance while all enjoyed the material and psychic “trickle down”. Instead we seem to be internationally. And when we use the benefits of a violent empire. witnessing a fearful waterfall of cascading terms “social democracy” and misery, cutbacks, foreclosures and job “progressivism” at points in this essay, we In his new, pioneering study of democracy losses on the middle and working classes do so with a sense of reluctance, in Britain since 1918, David Marquand in the global north, whose elites recognising both that they are identifies the two dominant paternalisms meanwhile are bailed out by governments unsatisfactory and that a “call” unsure of that oversaw the final stages of this they hitherto pretended to despise. And its name is one without a sure sense of domestic process. Whig imperialism and before we turn to the fate of the British itself. While we are in a position to democratic collectivism together have state with which this essay is mainly criticise we are hardly in a position to “shaped and steered Britain through most concerned, we should spare a thought for lecture the world on the best way of the 20th century”. The first is those outside the European welfare forward. So while this essay primarily personified by Burkean gentlemen, the system. Recently a Chinese toy focuses on the possibilities of transforming second by Fabian technocrats. Marquand manufacturer employing 7,000 people shut the British state and space, it does so in also proposes that there are two other his factory in Dongguan overnight as the context of international politics and shaping “strands”: Tory nationalism and exports collapsed. The pride of now political economy undergoing a democratic republicanism. While all four globalisation, that rural misery was planetary confrontation with the fruits of strands may have “home” parties they deregulated capitalism. coexist in other parties too, as well as compass PAGE 2 www.compassonline.org.uk Breaking out of Britain’s Neo-Liberal State within individual personalities. Thus the Brown and Peter Mandelson set about and Brown: the former less imbued with Labour leader Clement Attlee who seeking to save the public sector and the politics of the Labourist tribe and a oversaw the formative government of prevent a catastrophic social and true believer, in so far as he believed “democratic collectivism” after 1945, could educational disintegration. Despite the anything, in the hyperbole of the “new be flexibly Whiggish at home and imperial democratic reforms they inherited from dawn” of ’97. Brown was more a creation abroad; while his most original Tory their manifesto commitments including of the back-story of Labour, partial to successor the Whig imperialist Harold devolution and the Human Rights Act, understanding the world through the eyes Macmillan was a Labour-style collectivist in New Labour’s leaders, as Simon Jenkins of the faithful, and with a genuine concern his concerns for the working classes (2) . has documented in Thatcher and Sons, for ameliorating the plight of the losers in continued the core twin principles of society. This twin domination of the British Thatcher’s regime: the intensification of political system faced an apparently centralised executive authority and the The culmination of the triumph of the terminal crisis by the end of the 1970s. It cultivation of an elite order at ease with a neo-liberal state under New Labour was was an emergency that challenged the politics focused on winners, wealth and symbolised by Gordon Brown’s initial authority and legitimacy of the state itself, corporate logic - a neo-liberal regime. guest list to Chequers, the prime minister’s not just a party political difference over country house. When he gained the the direction government should take. It The godfather of this process whose premiership and could finally call the top was resolved by Margaret Thatcher who influence spans the entire three decades is job his own, two suitably distinguished assaulted “consensus politics”, a term Rupert Murdoch. Like Thatcher, in his men joined him there for the first post- which both identified and repudiated the British role he engaged in a two-front Blair weekend. They were Alan Greenspan mutually shaping collusion of Whigs and conflict with the post-war order of Whigs and Rupert Murdoch, the prime architect collectivists. In the decade that followed and Fabians. While his control of The Sun of the neo-liberal epoch and its ruthless she challenged and broke not only the gave him a cash cow to support his global media mogul. Neither was British or lived role of trade unions but also humiliated expansion, it blasted the values of trade- in the UK. the numerous institutions and attitudes of union solidarity and family respect, both the Labour state and high-Tory exploiting the weakness of a snobbish There is a European element to this as establishment. culture to advance the values of a well. Had Labour reversed Thatcherite consumerism without citizenship, scornful hostility and actively embraced Thatcher’s was a “Tory nationalism” in of the possibility of good government. This membership of the European Union, it Marquand’s terminology. She made powerful attack on traditional working would have joined a project of inter- popular a host of right-wing prejudices class allegiance to democratic collectivism dependent government. Instead it and homilies such as comparing was combined with his ownership of The continued to play the role of “reluctant government expenditure to household Times and Sunday Times, giving Murdoch a partner” to EU integration, while showing spending, and denying the logic of grip on the lucrative weekend purveyor of an obsessional commitment to the “special Keynesian economics, stating that middle-class property and lifestyle news.