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Edited on Sun Sep-28-03 10:42 AM by AP
...bottom two quintiles.
Blair is doing for the British economy at least what Clinton did for the American economy. We live in a world in which the rich dominate and it is very hard to stop their increasing concentration of wealth and power.
Blair and Clinton have been able to ensure that the gains have been made by the poor and middle class. And Blair, to his great credit, has been able to do this in what has been a totally shitty global economy.
Inequality is hard to stop because the rich are so powerful, but it'sclear that it would have been worse in Britain if Blair weren't PM. Just look at how bad it has gotten in the US now that Bush is running things.
As for immigrant bashing, I hate that more than anyone. But I see what Blair is doing. There is a very strong anti-immigration sentiment in Britain. It's very hard to drive a pro-immigration message from the top down. If Blair had done that, I think he wouldn't have been reelected in 2002. What Blair did do was, after he got elected, he sent Jack Straw out to sound like a fascist on immigration. Behind the scenes, they changed a ton of laws which made it harder for immigrants to live in Britain. In fact, one of the first things Blair did (I think within hours of becoming PM) was to change the rule where, if you moved to the UK before you were married and married someone in the UK you had to bring your fucking love letters to some fucking government office and let some bureaucrat read them to prove that you had been in a long-term relationship prior to moving to the UK. That was one of the most dehumanizing things Tories did to immigrants, and bordered on psychotic. Blair changed that law. They didn't make a big deal in the press about it. People like you probably don't know about it. It's because Blair had way more to lose from RW'ers pouncing on pro-immigration actions, then he has to lose from the far left pouncing on anti-immigration laws.
And, incidentally, Tony Blair built his career on a similar strategy. He realized in '83 that Labour was doing so poorly because they get in power, do a thousand left wing things and then the Tories (with media assistance) would exploit all those things. So Blair decided he do an end-run. He said that crime was the big thing hurting Labour. Tories were getting a ton of mileage out of portraying Labour as being soft on crime every time they got their single term and changed Britain's draconian criminal code to something more familiar to more civilized citizens of 20th century nations. So Blair became shadow justice minister (or whatever the title is) and operated under the meta-message "we're hard on crime, but harder on the causes of crime". That's how Blair took Labour from almost being extinct to where it was before Bush put Blair in his crosshairs.
Just as Blair did with immigration, he did with crime -- he talked the agressive talk to take a weapon from the Tory arsenal, but, behind the scenes, out of view of T-i-B, did things to give people a dignified, rewarding, happy life.
And, just as I hate hard talk on immigration, I hate the privitisation of public services. But, I also feel that Blair had little choice on this front, as doing the best he can do to lessen the impact of something that has HUGE institutional momentum behind it. You may not believe it, but the bidding labour does for PFIs is actually fair and it isn't corrupt. If the Tories were running Britain today, you could be sure that people winning bids on this stuff would be Tory cronies. At the very least -- and this is no small thing -- if Blair can clear the deck of lots of inevitable projects during his term, he will ensure that the wealth spread from PFIs doesn't go towards entrenching Tory wealth, and, therefore, political power. At the root of Blair's Labour government's poliicies, is the notion that, if they can spread as much wealth as far down the income ladder, it will translate into political power and they can create a bulwark against future Tory fascism.
I know the real politik is very unsatsifying and very easy to attack. But the alternative to acknowleding it is to participate in the sabotage of Tony Blair, which will result in a Tory government, and the further entrenchment of all the things you really hate.
Finally, if you don't feel that the UK is better today than it was before 97, I can't do much to convince you. But I think if you walk down any street in any major city in the UK, you could see the differences. If you looked at a list of laws and policies that Labour has dumped in the trash bin, you could see the difference.
Incidentally, I remember a couple elections when the Tories decided to play the immigration card, and the next night, somebody went out a stabbed dead an immigrant. I'll be embarrassed if I'm wrong about this, but I don't think that a Jack Straw anti-immigration comment ever resulted in a race riot and a Pakistani immigrant getting murdered the next day. That is a huge improvement in the level of the debate on immigration matters in the UK.
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