AND ANOTHER THING
Blairism and Clintonomics have something in common
PAUL JOHNSON
Something curious is happening in the world of politics; huge shifts are taking place which will determine the shape of things well into the next century. The pro- cess started in 1979 when Margaret Thatch- er got herself elected and soon revealed that she was prepared to say things respectable, modern-minded people pro- nounced unspeakable, and do things the liberal consensus declared to be impossible. She removed the legal privileges of the trade unions, for instance, destroying most of their power with it; and privatised most of the state sector, demonstrating that pri- vate enterprise could run virtually anything better.
That lesson has been applied all over the world. But it was in America that Mrs Thatcher's break-with-the-past approach had most impact. It was a factor not merely in the election of Ronald Reagan at the end of 1980, but in the kind of president he became — a radical iconoclast of the Right. Together Thatcher and Reagan demolished the Soviet Union, or perhaps one should say helped it demolish itself, another thing all well-informed progressives declared to be out of the question. And in doing so Thatcher and Reagan nailed up the coffin of the socialist 'command economy' and buried it deep, probably for ever.
But not even Thatcher and Reagan dared to attack the welfare state, though both in their hearts knew it was morally wrong, and in their heads were convinced we couldn't go on paying for it. Now, how- ever, Bill Clinton, the lifelong Democrat, cheerfully signs the Republican law putting an end to the most cherished aspects of the American welfare system, going back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Bob Dole, an old-style pre-Reagan Republican, brought up to believe that the world was full of no- go areas protected by liberal voodoo, is frankly bewildered and does not know how to cope with such a chameleon.
Over here, Tony Blair has taken aboard the lessons of Thatcherism in a way the fusty old Conservative establishment, where Thatcher's old liberal enemies like Michael Heseltine are still in power, still finds impossible. Blair cheerfully admits his debt to Thatcher and is plainly going to carry her revolution further. He has done his sums and he knows that if money is to be found for the improvements he believes important, then the old welfare state will have to go — the only questions are when, where, how much and how.
The fact is, ideas have consequences which work themselves out beyond the lives of those who first give expression to them. The next generation carries them further. Oldies like Reagan and Thatcher, Hesel- tine and Dole — I leave out John Major because he merely bobs on the waves oth- ers make — find it hard to shake off some luggage of their past. Clinton and Blair have no such inhibitions. Clinton from ambition and the love of power, Blair from conviction and the love of truth — both read the signs of the age and move forward confidently. I suspect they will go much fur- ther. If re-elected, Clinton may well recover the old Democratic tradition of low spend- ing and decentralisation, resume the cru- sade of General Andrew Jackson who actu- ally paid off the national debt, and the ideas of Thomas Jefferson who believed in states' rights and a minimalist federal gov- ernment.
Tony Blair's transformation of the Labour Party is only just getting into its stride. Labour was born in 1900 as the par- liamentary representative of producer groups organised in trade unions. That has always been its trouble; it has been a mere interest group party which fords it hard to speak for the nation as a whole, and that is why it has held power for such brief periods during the century of its existence. Even today, Labour finds itself, from old reflex- es, making feeble excuses for militant Underground and Post Office workers two exceptionally selfish and stupid interest groups loathed by all the rest of us. It was one of Margaret Thatcher's discoveries rather like Disraeli's realisation that con- servatism and patriotism were classless that it is morally preferable, and politically more rewarding, to see the nation as con- sumers rather than producers. Under Major that insight has been lost sight of. In its desperation to stay in office at any cost, to redeem its desperate finances and pump artificial energy into the economy, the Con- servative Party has again become the expression of narrow interest groups, some of them very sleazy indeed. And it is Tony Blair who is following Thatcher's lead and is turning Labour into the party of con- sumers — that is, of the nation.
That will mean in the end a complete break with the trade unions. You ask: how will his party find substitute financing? I do not know. But if people as producers can be organised to pay for political representa- tion, I do not see why people as consumers cannot do the same. No, that is not the long-term problem for Blair. In the domes- tic context he now has the ball at his feet, and he ought to be able to keep it there not just at the coming election but for a long time to come. The problem is quite differ- ent — it is Europe and our gradual absorp- tion in it. The fundamental shifts which have been taking place in politics have revolved around three main discoveries. First, that socialism not only does not work but leads directly to poverty. Second, that it is a mistake to use the state to try to redis- tribute income — to tax the successful in order to subsidise the unsuccessful. Third, that allowing producer interests to dictate economic policy is a formula for long-term decline. The intellectual weakness of the European Union is that it is still wedded, to some extent, to all three of these disastrous 20th-century errors. In particular, it trans- fers enormous sums of money from the pockets of consumers in order to give it to inefficient producers. And, increasingly, it limits the freedom of everyone by regula- tions, restrictions and quotas, in order to protect the interests of privileged groups. The fact that the United States does not belong to an organisation like the EU will prove an enormous advantage in ensuring its survival and continued success in the 21st century. The political revolution in America can continue unimpeded, and that is one reason I am confident America can beat off the challenge from Asia for global economic paramountcy. Europe, however, is moving in exactly the opposite direction — back into the 20th century. I suspect Blair knows all this already. He will certain- ly discover it as prime minister. Then he will either have to turn the EU round or, far more likely, take Britain out of it.
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