For New Labour, Nothing Is “Off Limits”

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For New Labour, Nothing Is “Off Limits”

Despite being discredited and returned with a reduced majority, and faced with an even deeper crisis of legitimacy, the Blair government is showing that it has contempt for the electorate and only “listens” to the demands of the monopolies. Under the guise of “national interest” and the good of “hard-working families”, it has set its face against the interests of the workers and in favour of the primacy of monopoly right over the public good.

            It is bringing back into government some of the most reviled and discredited characters who have shown themselves loyal proponents of the anti-social offensive, “investment with reform”, and the anti-social offensive as a whole.

            Former Home Secretary, and now new Work and Pensions Secretary, David Blunkett was referring to the offensive against the workers’ pensions when he said that there were “no off-limits here”. But it is clear that this is even now becoming the clarion call of this “historic” Labour government. The crisis at MG Rover, the planned sacking of hundreds of thousands of public sector workers, further wholesale privatisation and the complete delivery of public services into the clutches of big business under the signboard of “modernisation” – this is the programme being delineated by New Labour.

            The contempt the government has for the electorate is also shown in the way, for example, New Labour advisor Andrew Adonis has been made into a Lord simply for the purpose of being given in a ministerial job in the Education Department. Is this the meaning of New Labour’s “constitutional reform”?

            Tony Blair’s vision is to rule as a “national government”, implementing a parliamentary consensus that will enable the agenda of the big monopolies and the international financial oligarchy to be pushed through against the interests of the working class and people, but in the name of everyone bar possibly such social forces as the “fox-hunting” lobby. That he is a war criminal he continually and unsuccessfully attempts to put aside and enjoin the people to “move on”, as the monopoly media step up their denigration, slanders and outright lies against leading figures in the anti-war movement.

            Meanwhile the crisis nationally and internationally is intensifying. In this situation, the workers and progressive forces cannot afford not to organise to give voice to their interests and to discuss and take action in their collectives basing themselves on their own experience, summing up this experience free from dogmatic renderings of reality, without either pessimism or euphoria. The New Labour anti-worker and anti-social and pro-war offensive must not be allowed to succeed!