New Labour. New government. New ruses. New lies. It takes us back to those times—not so long ago—when John Major put on his King Canute act, as the tides of sleaze washed all around him, denying that he was drowning in corruption or, if he was drowning, there was nothing wrong in that.
When Tony Blair was confronted with the evidence which suggested that, in response to a £1 million donation from the Formula One millionaire Bernie Ecclestone, the government had changed its mind over banning tobacco advertising on the racing cars, his response was to say that it was just crazy to even think that Labour ministers could be guilty of such a thing. When it was put to him that there was a little—how do we put this— inconsistency between government taxation policies and the way the Paymaster General manages his considerable wealth, Blair’s response was again to describe such an allegation as scandalous, incredible. So that’s all right then—except that in neither case did Blair’s apparent indignation allow him to answer the question.
During Prime Minister’s Questions on 10 December Blair’s comment to an intervention from William Hague about Tory and Labour MPs voting together to cut single parents’ benefit was “I’m sorry (which is not to be taken as meaning that he actually was sorry) but he is simply wrong. “ And when Hague gave examples of the assurances given by some ministers, before they got into office, that they would not implement the cuts designed by the Tory government, Blair snarled that, again, he was “sorry but that is simply not correct".
Women MPs
In fact, both Blair and his Social Security Secretary Harriet Harman went on record against the cuts in lone parent benefit when the Major government decided to implement them in November 1996. Labour’s election manifesto New Labour Because Britain Deserves Better had one brief paragraph on lone parents which set out plans to help them get jobs, which sounded very caring and supportive but forgot to mention about making them even poorer in the process. Of course there are other Labour MPs whose behaviour has been equally cynical. Chris Pond, for example, made his name as Director of the Low Pay Unit and in those days he was never backward in making scathing, well documented comments on Tory proposals to make the lot of poorer workers even worse. Pond was quite clear about the proposal to cut single parent benefit: — “particularly spiteful “ he called it and, just in case we had missed the point, “[the cut] will make it much harder for families to make ends meet “.Well since then Pond has become a Labour MP and he has voted for the cut in benefit which he labelled as “spiteful “.
Another Labour MP—a woman, and we all know how enthusiastic the Labour Party was about getting women into Parliament so that they could run capitalism more humanely and sensitively than men—was anonymously quoted in the Observer of 23 November, spouting the kind of unfounded bigotry about poverty which is supposed to be confined to the shriller kind of saloon bar Tory:
“These [single mothers] aren’t desperate people. Most of them have got men somewhere in the background. “
Without pausing to supply evidence of the existence of the high-living benefit scroungers, this architect of Labour’s New Britain showed what value she puts on election promises and how she regards the people who elected her party to power:
“There were some people who voted for me who thought we could make a difference.They didn’t understand.”
Perhaps this is the kind of attitude Tony Blair had in mind when he wrote, in his preface to Labour’s manifesto, that it was “hardly surprising” that “People are cynical about politics and distrustful of political promises.”
Scroungers
In fact the cut in lone parent benefit is not likely to be the end of the matter.The signs are that this government has more plans to eradicate these scroungers who threaten to undermine the very foundations of this country so that people like Bernie Ecclestone will not be able to invest so much in Formula One races and others like Paymaster-General Geoffrey Robinson will have to think twice about involving themselves in offshore trusts. Perhaps we may soon have special fraud squads to question anyone found by themselves pushing a pram.
Meanwhile there is Frank Field, who also came up through the poverty lobby and who is now Minister for the ominously titled Welfare Reform, refusing to rule out plans to impose further benefit cuts on single parents who don’t knuckle under to the government’s pressure to find a job—any job, no matter how bad the conditions or pay. Then there are all those other bloodsuckers like old-age pensioners who at present can backdate a benefit claim for a year but who, under Tory plans which Labour will implement, will now have to do it within one month—a measure described by Age Concern as “mean and certainly not in the spirit of Labour’s pre-election pledges’’
Of course it could be that the benefit rates are so generous that the people who live on them are emerging as a newly enriched privileged class, living in luxury while the likes of Ecclestone, Robinson and Blair scavenge in dustbins for their next meal to give them the strength to plan further benefit cuts. The organisation Justice, a human rights group, recently compiled some figures about conditions in this country. Justice says that the benefit for lone parents are £23 a week less than is needed; that one-in three children and 65 percent of disabled people live on or below the poverty line; that nearly 1.5 million homes are unfit to live in. And so on. Take your pick of the evidence, both statistical and anecdotal. It tells the same story and it is different from the one told by that Labour MP, who said the voters didn’t understand when they elected a Labour government.
Perhaps the voters did not understand; they didn’t understand that the real issue was not whether British capitalism should be run by the Conservative or the Labour Party but the urgency of replacing capitalism by socialism. One thing is certain: a proper understanding of what is at stake and how we can authentically change society can only be helped by the exposure of the contemptible creeps who tell us that under Tony Blair things can only get better.
Ivan
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