New Labour are supposed to represent socialist ideas as epitomised by the Fabian society. They were frantically upset back in the 80's when Thatcher and her Tories went around selling all the public companies of the United Kingdom including such prominent features as the National Engineering Laboratory (we sure could need that now when we when there is hole of 20,000 engineers missing in the British industry sector). There is a common misconception that New Labour have been better and that they have not been vigorously trying to forward their own personal agendas, by that account I mean of course feeding their on psyche by getting richer and richer all the time completely disregarding the ideals of socialism. To date what have these hypocrites sold of since they came to power in 1997 (this is an ongoing article which I cannot possibly compose in one go since there are so many national industries that have been disposed of since 1997).
DERA (Defence Evaluation Research Agency)
Royal Mail
London Underground
British Energy
Council Housing
Schools
UKAEA
Royal Mint (This has not actually been sold, yet, but they are planning to. Which again highlights the economic/financial brilliance of New Labour: Who in their right mind would sell anything in these times?)
(The picture accompanying this article allures to what kind of people you will end up with if more and more of his daily services become more expensive by the day, suffice to say the government will need more than their largely defunct (in the sense of public appreciation of) police service to stop a hoard of him. It is not for nothing that the government is buying up large amounts of riot gear in what will most likely prove to be one of the hottest summers in memory - in both senses.)
1 comment:
I'm not sure I would agree that New Labour's sale of public industries equates to those sold during the Thatcher period.
Thatcher believed that the privatisation of industry would lead to a freer more competitive market for goods and services - as Adam Smith remarked, ‘the freer the market the freer the people’. While she was not necessarily correct about this (or about selling off British industry) her intentions and their outcome were arguably different to that which New Labour has sought.
The Labour Party has not actually been interested in nationalisation and state ownership of industry for some decades now. This has been the case since Roy Jenkins and Tony Crosland decided that the Culture Wars were far more important than direct state intervention in the British economy through ownership of the means of production. Incidentally, culture was a battleground over which Thatcher neglected to fight, being in the end very much to our detriment.
Under Blair and Brown, the privatisation of industry has not been undertaken with the purpose of freeing the market and ‘rolling back the frontiers of the State’ as Thatcher tried to do (though some might reasonably argue that she was unsuccessful), but with the intention of increasing the power of the State. Newly privatised industries have been increasingly heavily regulated to the extent that they are virtually state controlled. This is not a ‘free market’ solution but a so-called ‘social market’.
What is more, our ever closer economic and political union with the EU has allowed New Labour to entrench may of the economic and worker’s ‘rights’ laws in stone – unchangeable by any opposition party that may take power, lest they were to leave the EU entirely.
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