TONY BLAH: The Third Way

By - Wolf De Voon, Author

from www.wolfdevoon.com- 16 February, 1999


Analysis of British prime minister Tony Blair's newly-published manifesto of
The Third Way - enthusiastic game plan for 21st century government.


The Third Way gets a dandy neofascist marketing plan.

 British prime minister Tony Blair likes government, and positively heaves with enthusiasm for the future of democracy. Well he should. Tony Blair is the best thing that happened to British socialism since the invention of income tax.

 I suppose I should be grateful to have a worthy opponent. Blair's recently-published political manifesto, The Third Way: New Politics for the New Century, digs fresh ground and convincingly defends the indefensible. It is an outstanding achievement in rhetoric. He makes the welfare state seem reasonable and sane, positively essential to modern society. Coming from me, that's high praise.

 Blair gets top marks for historical creativity and truly breathtaking contradictions. "The Third Way," he explains, "is founded on the values which have guided progressive politics for more than a century -- democracy, liberty, justice, mutual obligation and internationalism... The Third Way is not an attempt to split the difference between Right and Left. It is about traditional values in a changed world... [Margaret Thatcher] asserted the primacy of individual liberty in the market economy; [Karl Marx] promoted social justice with the state as its main agent. There is no necessary conflict between the two, accepting as we do that state power is one means to achieve our goals, but not the only one and emphatically not an end in itself." ...Wow!

Blair's values are bulletproof: "The new constitution of the Labour Party commits us to seek the widest possible spread of wealth, power and opportunity... The rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe; rights and opportunity without responsibility are engines of selfishness and greed."

 It could be an ordinary share-the-wealth scam. But here comes the Blair sledgehammer, with universal obedience and obligation at the base of his Third Way: "We need to shape modern institutions of work, and the institutions in which children are brought up, on the basis of enduring values -- justice for all, responsibility from all." Every business decision will be scrutinized by government; parents will be 'policed' by state inspectors, to determine if they are raising their children properly.

 Agriculture and industry are verboten in the Blair Economy. "Services, knowledge, skills and small enterprises are its cornerstones," he cautions. "Most of its output cannot be weighed, touched or measured." (This is a politically-specific warning shot, fired at the wallets of trade unionists and three million metal bashers who voted for New Labour and are no longer economically or demographically important to the New Labour regime. Workers of the world, prepare for retirement!) If Blair's view of the economy sounds a little screwloose, here's the party line on wealth-creation:

 "We all depend on collective goods for our independence, and all our lives are enriched or impoverished by the communities to which we belong... [F]reedom for the many requires strong government... Government intervention is necessary to protect the weak..."

Blair's Third Way agenda has the raw growl of fascism: state control of everyone and everything.

 "Strong communities depend on shared values and a recognition of the rights and duties of citizenship -- not just the duty to pay taxes and obey the law, but the obligation to bring up children as competent, responsible citizens, and to support those -- such as teachers -- who are employed by the state in the task. In the past we have tended to take such duties for granted. But where they are neglected, we should not hestitate to encourage and even enforce them... In all areas, monitoring and inspection are playing a key role, as an incentive to higher standards and as a means of determining appropriate levels of intervention... The Government will have powers to intervene where performance indicators or inspectors' reports show that there is a serious or persistent failure in the delivery of services."

 Ostensibly, this is being done to make the trains run on time and to salvage the byzantine superstructure of Britain's government health care monopoly, the NHS, Europe's largest employer. To her everlasting shame, Mrs Thatcher lacked the courage to dismantle this medical monstrosity, doubling her NHS budget instead of calling a socialist sewer a sewer. Immune from competition and tort law, the NHS continues to neglect and butcher helpless patients, driving competent doctors and nurses from practice, widening the deeply-entrenched English "brain drain" that Tony Blair proposes to slam shut by adding another layer of inept supervisors, regulators, inspectors and informers. It is irrelevant that government officials and the Royal Family are treated by an elite cadre of private physicians in private hospitals. Hypocrisy is the least of his problems. At its core, Blair's Third Way is a prescription for totalitarian poison.

 "Money is not the only problem!" Blair shouted to the assembled Labour Party. "There are too few good state schools, too much tolerance of mediocrity, too little pursuit of excellence... We are spending more but getting less, failing to help those who need it and sometimes helping those who don't -- billions wasted every year through fraud and abuse. We have a system of unemployment benefit that asks first not how to get people into work but how to get them onto benefit."

 The Third Way? Controls, police, penalities and obedience to government. Blair sounds like a transcript of Hitler at times: "Success in life never comes without a struggle. This is our challenge. To hold firm; to show the same resolution in changing the country as we did in changing the Labour Party... The challenge we face has to be met by us together: one nation, one community... The crude individualism of the 80s is the mood no longer. The spirit of the times is community."

 And the first thing that Blair's community intends to do is censor the Internet and rub out free speech. They have already proposed that every email message and every web visit in Europe should be logged by every ISP and reported to the police, to allegedly track down pornographers and drug dealers.

 To an American reader, that probably sounds outrageous and incredible. To a European, it's par for the socialist course. Marlboros are $6 a pack. A 40W light bulb costs $1 and lasts half as long. Employment taxes are higher than the amount paid to workers. Local property tax on a single-family home averages $6,000 a year. A new pair of shoes cost $100. Wages across the board in Britain are about half of what Americans earn. People wait an average of six months for hospital treatment after diagnosis.

 To rectify this problem, admirers of the Third Way can chant the party wish list:

 Like Hitler before him, Mr Blair insists that nothing is predictable in the conduct of his government: "A large measure of pragmatism is essential. As I say continually, what matters is what works to give effect to our values... There are even claims that it is unprincipled... Our approach is 'permanent revisionism,' a continual search for better means to meet our goals, based on a clear view of the changes taking place in advanced industrialized societies."

 So, there you have it, comrade. The global economic crisis will prompt a series of improvizations by a man who sees himself annointed by history. Forget the misty-eyed care and concern, his carefully staged informality and scripted sound bites. Evil never announces itself as evil, threatening to destroy your happiness. It humbly defends you, and prays to God for guidance -- right, Tony?

The above essay was posted on the Internet. Last modification shown as 16Feb99.
It was written by Wolf De Voon, owner of the website "www.wolfdevoon.com".
A further version, with a graphic title, can be found at "www.zolatimes.com".

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