At the end of this week, the United Kingdom will have a new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. Many people think of Prime Minister Blair as the beneficiary of Thatcherite policies, the PM who benefited most from the Thatcher Revolution, and they would be right. If the Iron Lady had not swept aside all dissenting voices, negated protesters' actions and been so one-track minded to plough through with her reforms, the UK would still be a country run by the traditionalists, the big spenders and the quasi-welfare state would now be taking more tax off us than we earn. As it happens, that might not have been such a bad thing. If you look around at all the countries at the top of the quality of life league, they are all big tax and spenders. Further down the list you find countries such as the US and the UK, who are more in the business of making you pay for what you want, while sympathising with, yet neglecting the needs, of those below the poverty line.
This was what Mrs Thatcher and Presidents Reagan and Bush (Snr) advocated way back in the eighties. They wanted to free-up the world market to make things more flexible, make it easier to hire hard-working, ambitious people and fire the job-for-life comfortable no-gooders. However, their high-yield strategy has some unwelcome side-effects: the sale of anything and everything to pay off national debts and increase buyer power, thus forcing employees to succumb to working for foreign bosses and getting used to their way of working, ending national rules and regulations on working hours, rights and leave, emphasising competition, productivity and client importance.
The result? While some things have been going very well (telephony, energy, to name two), others have paid high prices for their introduction to the free market (public transport, cars). Enterprises which for decades were British (Rolls Royce, British Steel, British Gas) now found themselves in the hands of venture capitalists and free marketeers whose only objective is to get a higher year-on-year profit. We never truly understood just how far we had gone until Mittal and Tata, Indian companies, made their entry into the European markets, and China made moves to establish itself as a new world economic superpower.
Other, more sinister side-effects were also turning up: workers were free to come and go, outsourced companies could have their contracts torn up at any time, and products became more flimsy as enterprises tried to make higher profits.
We have also been slowly de-patriotised. I mean by this that as enterprises buy foreign companies, like for example if Mercedes-Benz were bought by the Spanish or Renault became Estonian, our own national sense of who we are is being eroded and undermined. We hark back to our traditions, like the Queen's Birthday or the FA Cup Final (sponsored by a German company) but our roots are being pulled up by mergers and acquisitions from outside. Coupled with that is migration and freedom of movement Europe-wide. A brilliant idea, but one which needs tracking, because whilst a cosmopolitan Europe is to be applauded, it could have negative consequences resulting in a public outcry to repatriate workers whom they claim have stolen their jobs.
In amongst all this, Tony Blair, the Labour Prime Minister, who had to pander to the new rulers in their executive suites while staying true to his socialist roots. If we compare modern British socialism to that in France, it is quite easy to say that Tony Blair had a lot more in common with Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and Silvio Berlusconi than he ever did with Lionel Jospin's socialists. But this makes him the only leader in the world who can cross the frontiers of ideology, persuading leaders that just because you are from the Christian Democrats or the Socialists, there is no need to adopt everything your party ideology dictates. The outcome has been quite interesting. Tony Blair's Third Way has muddied the waters of European politics, making it quite acceptable to mix and match policy to either European norms or to make your laws more competitive.
This Blairite Europe he has created means that in effect all the big decisions are made at the Council of Ministers in Brussels, the 27 leaders taking decisions affecting us all Europe-wide, making it binding and most importantly totally inconsequential which party is in power at national level. Without realising it, Europeans are in a superstate whether they like it or not, because the crux of the matter is Tony Blair and his allies have laid down an agenda which will have far-reaching consequences in future European matters. I am of course not talking about public services (unless they have been subjected to market forces), but the economic and labour sectors have definitely been taken over Europe-wide, and Tony Blair had the largest hand.
The newspapers yesterday said that he might be a future European President when the constitution (or the treaty) is ratified, removing the 6-month rotating presidency from national governments and creating one post at the top. Will he be elected? Who knows? I doubt it. Yet another reason for the tabloid press to moan at undemocratic European ways. I, for one, would have mixed feelings about this as although it is a logical step, it makes it more difficult for governments to make their views known, and would be yet another muddying of the waters.
