British Labour moves further right
By Phil Clarke
LONDON — Thirteen years ago the British Labour Party erupted with the most sustained and radical left-wing challenge since the 1920s. In September 1981, the leading figure of the Labour left, Tony Benn, failed by one percentage point to win the deputy leadership of the party. Left-wingers, many of them veterans of the 1960s student movement, streamed into the Labour Party to back up the left's challenge.
The contrast between that period of radicalism and the election of Tony Blair on July 21 following the death of party leader John Smith in May, could not be greater.
All three candidates for the party's leadership — Tony Blair, who won with 57% of the vote, Margaret Beckett and John Prescott — supported similar right-wing positions. A televised debate between the three in mid-June was embarrassing in its unanimity on nearly every policy issue.
Tony Blair, formerly the shadow home secretary, is one of the BLP's most outspoken right-wing "modernisers" and had the support of the vast majority of MPs and trade union leaders. In a separate ballot for deputy leadership Prescott, with 56%, defeated the acting leader Beckett.
Despite the formal agreement on major policy issues with the other two candidates, Blair's election symbolises a further shift to the right. Moreover, his emphasis on "personal responsibility" as opposed to state welfare provision and his "get tough on crime" policies have outflanked the Tories to the right.
Advocates of free market values, the so-called modernisers, want to change the structure of the BLP from the traditional social democratic party based on links with the trade unions, towards a US Democratic-style party.
Blair claims he is neither "old left nor new right". In fact, he and his supporters are completing the job of evacuating Labour of any radical policies, to make it "fit to govern". Leading right-wing economics commentator, Samuel Brittan, argued in the influential Financial Times that there were no longer any significant policy differences between Labour and the Conservatives, and that the business sector should perhaps reconcile itself to a period of Labour government while the crisis-ridden Conservatives reorganise themselves.
The day before Blair's election, Prime Minister John Major reshuffled his cabinet in an attempt to halt the declining popularity of the Conservatives. The Tories received a drubbing in both the European elections and the British local government polls.